Channing Tatum himself tweeted news this morning of the first trailer for Dear John, his inaugural entry into the world of heart-tugging, lady-ready, three-hanky multiplex romance. More than a transparent gesture of self-promotion, however, the message signaled an implicit gesture of pride announcing Tatum's arrival just beyond your expectations. It wasn't "Look at me" so much as "Look at this": Love! Drama! Sex! Tension! War! Tears! More tears! What the hell is the dude from Step Up and G.I. Joe doing here? A lot, as it turns out.
Going strictly from what's happening in this trailer, I can't really say I have any idea what's going on storywise. It's something like this: Girl (Amanda Seyfried) drops purse in the ocean, boy saves purse, boy returns purse to girl, girl falls in love with boy, boy's father looks creepily at girl, boy goes to Iraq, girl writes letters, boy replies to letters, boy comes home to girl, boy has sex with girl, boy's father croaks, everybody cries for years. Even you cry! It's based on a Nicholas Sparks novel, for heaven's sake. Just map the usual plot points, throw Tatum and Seyfried's faces over them and you're about 60 percent there. Director/sensitivity maven Lasse Hallström accounts for another 10 percent, and Richard Jenkins's slumpy eyes and face contribute another 5 percent of moody texture just in case.
The remaining 25 percent of this trailer's searing hormonal impact coruscates from Tatum's tearducts. He's always been a spotty performer at best, more visibly at ease playing variations of himself (Step Up, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints) than the Idealized White American Hero (Fighting, G.I. Joe) or second-tier ensemble fodder (Stop-Loss). Tatum is clearly taking some radical chances here, and it's fascinating to see his vulnerability -- overplayed or not -- implode the myth laid out for him in previous work. The trailer places him front-and-center in his career cliche that women love a man in uniform, and then strips that uniform of all its power as a means of coaxing women to see it.
That's thinking outside the box, and it may be why Tatum so spiritedly tweeted this link to his fans today. He's not suddenly declaring his seriousness as an actor or anything, but he is declaring a certain revenge on low standards. Dear John may amount to nothing more than a weepie when it opens next February, but for now, it's the unlikeliest revelation of the day. And there have been a couple doozies.
VERDICT: Intrigued!