Dear John

Spoiler Alert! If you have not seen this movie, and you intend too-do not read this.

So Rob rented this movie for me today after I convinced him it was worth watching because it was from the author of The Notebook. He knows how much I love that movie and book! Well was I in for a shock...I am totally in a funk after watching the movie!

Let me summarize for you. Girl meets boy and for the first hour of the movie, it is all about the sweetest love story. (The two actors really do have great on screen chemistry!) Boy is a Green Beret in the Army and is sent over seas to serve his country. They write letters to each other and they "date" via numbered letters to each other. They survive the first year apart with flying colors. Who doesn't love a sweet love story of a soldier and his girlfriend waiting an eternity to be with him?

When he goes back to finish up his tour of duty, she suddenly stops writing. After 2 months of nothing-she writes him a letter breaking up with him telling him that she is engaged to someone else! What?!? What do you mean she is engaged to someone else?!? This is not how this is supposed to end!

Sure enough, he burns all of the letters-he gets shot twice in combat-he gets sent home when his dad dies-AND she marries the other guy!!! WTF? She is supposed to be waiting for him after breaking her engagement-right? Wrong.

He goes to finally say goodbye to her on the day of his dads funeral to get closure, and he finds out who she married. He was a friend of theirs, and he is dying of cancer. Sooooo...as we are watching this movie-I was actually rooting for the husband to die! (Awful-I know.) It is so apparent that she made the wrong choice.

They try to patch up the story at the end by her writing him a letter letting him know that her husband did in fact pass away. The final scenes of the movie are of the two of them meeting again and hugging. The final fleeing moments do NOT make up for the fact that the soldier was left broken, the girl knew she made the wrong choice, and the dead husband died knowing that she still loved him. AWFUL-AWFUL-AWFUL!

Nicholas Sparks you let me down!!! Now I am just going to have to read the dumb book to see if it will fix the story for me. I am hoping that the book was lost in the translation somewhere while making the movie.

I feel just like after I watched Legends of the Fall. I keep rooting for the love story that just doesn't happen. Damn you Tristan and Damn you Dear John!

(With all that said, I really did like to two actors in the movie. They had great chemistry, but the dumb love story was doomed between them apparently. BOOOOOOO!)