No sparks for 'Dear John'

It's cupid's season again, and with Valentine's Day looming close ahead, what we do without a novel-turned-movie by the modern king of heartrending romances, Nicholas Sparks?

While gauging the reactions of the mostly female crowd filing out of the theater before entering the love war zone, the girls dabbed their red-rimmed eyes while their supportive boyfriends yawned, a foreboding testament of what was to come.

If you didn't know what a "Dear John" letter was before the movie (other than a letter to a guy named John), get ready to grab some tissues, or maybe just a tissue.

"Dear John" begins with the classic cookie-cutter characters in a Sparks' tale- the rugged handsome man and the beautiful, good-natured girl, who inevitably come together and fall into love in five minutes. John Tyree, played by the striking Channing Tatum, is a soldier on leave from the army in his hometown in South Carolina in the spring of 2001, where he meets Savannah Curtis (Amanda Seyfried), a college student who is virtuously spending her spring break building houses for the less fortunate.

The heart of the story involves the love affair between John and Savannah through letters when John returns to the army and is away fighting in the Special Forces. He rarely is able to come back and see his beloved face to face, forcing the story to be told mostly through letters.

While this can be a fascinating and introspective approach in a novel, it doesn't translate to an enthralling and dynamic movie. Instead, we have long panning shots of beautiful scenery strung together over bland narration and a serene but lackluster soundtrack. A music video on MTV might be more interesting unless you have a soft spot for South Carolina beaches.

The scenes that do involve John and Savannah in the same place are painfully cliché (think: kissing in the rain) and reminiscent of "The Notebook" at times, only without the spunk and bordering on monotonous. Savannah is described as a "conservative" girl who doesn't smoke, drink or party. But she seems to have no problems with the hot and heavy make-out session with John a few days after meeting him- just another problem with the character inconsistencies and their transparent and bland personalities.

One of the only convincing characters in the movie is John's father (Richard Jenkins) who plays an emotionally withdrawn but gentle and loving father, and who produces one of the only truly convincingly tear-jerking scenes in the movie with his son. Savannah's childhood friend Tim (Henry Thomas) is another character that has his moments of sincerity but his storyline is so farfetched that even his decent acting skills can't save him here.

The story itself is uninspiring and most of the characters give us no real reason to care at all about what happens to them. When disaster hits on 9/11 and John is faced with the decision to reenlist and leave Savannah for another two years, it hardly seems like it should be an issue for people who are in such a profound state of love.

Although Seyfried holds her own and has a few scenes where she is almost believable, she just doesn't have the charismatic individuality of Rachel McAdams from "The Notebook." Instead of sparks flying in intense scenes with the stoic Channing Tatum, things fizzle almost as fast as they start, leaving the audience bored and disappointed.

The ending seems like an afterthought, as if only stuck on to make the movie a little more Hollywood and the girls swoon, but by this time you've hopefully realized that the only surprising aspect of the entire movie is the fact that you've been able to sit through one hour and 42 minutes of it.

Megan Keyho is a senior English major and lifestyles editor.