In Theaters: Dear John

Another in the increasingly inbred line of romantic melodramas to spring from the fertile loins of Nicholas Sparks, Dear John is as inspired as its title, a reference that originated with the scores of break-up letters sent to soldiers deployed overseas during World War II. Director Lasse Hallström certainly brings the pastoral pretty to the first 40 minutes of this story of a young couple -- a Green Beret and angelic deb played by Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried -- who meet during a spring break spent in their native Charleston, South Carolina, and then are essentially separated for the rest of the film: beach grass has never looked better, or more prolific.

As Savannah Curtis, Seyfried plays a privileged and extremely poised young woman whose halo follows her everywhere she goes. Savannah is all things southern belle: genteel, pursed, and inconstant. She invites the rather reserved John (Tatum), who is home on leave from the Army, to a cook-out at one of her family's massive estates, and the two share a sort of charmingly bumbling and then more relaxed rapport. John spells out Savannah's appeal ("Aren't you everybody's type?") but it is Tatum who inhabits his dimly outlined character -- the strong, silent soldier -- with charisma and emotion.

Dear John is in fact Tatum's film, something that only becomes clear when John is deployed... somewhere, several months before September 11, 2001 (he is not allowed to say where). The couple agree to write each other letters to help ease their separation. When, after 9/11, the men in John's unit rally to extend their deployments, John must decide whether to keep Savannah waiting or do what his fellow soldiers want him to do. After an undetermined amount of time that might be months or might be years, the break-up letter from Savannah reaches John wherever it is he is stationed at whatever time it might then be. Unable to earn even a good, guilty cry, Dear John sputters out with a series of emotional cheats meant to suggest the circuitous but ultimately triumphant course of a fated love. Yeah, send me a postcard.