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Dear John is not just pages from The Notebook

Written by Jason Boyd, The Shorthorn Scene editor

Wednesday, 03 February 2010 04:46 PM

A military man is torn from his love for seven years by deployment in Iraq but stays in touch through love letters.

This may be a true story for many Americans, but it’s also the plot for the romantic drama Dear John, starring Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried, which releases Friday.

Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried in Screengems drama Dear John (Courtesy Photo: Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.)

“I hope that people don’t think that it’s about war,” Seyfried said to The Shorthorn. “I really don’t want people thinking that they’re going to go in and have another depressing war movie on their hands. We tried to take as much of the military — and we didn’t want to see John with a weapon on all the time and slogging through really dangerous places.”

The movie does feature war scenes as one of its settings, but the meat of the story is the romance between the characters. Something Tatum said he prepared for, as opposed to previous movies that had him portraying a soldier, like G.I. Joe.

“We were going to be digging our fingers down into it,” he said. “G.I. Joe, there’s not a lot of emotion. It’s a lot of explosions and stuff and it was a great change of pace to just to get to sit on a beach with somebody and actually look them in the eye and have a real conversation.”

Playing the woman left behind, Seyfried said she has a new understanding of the real-life role many play every day.

“I recently just met a bunch of women that are literally just hanging and waiting,” she said. “We were just at Fort Bragg. About 100 families there, wives in particular that were telling me how their husband or fiancé had just been deployed, and it’s tough.”

Seyfriend said it’s something she couldn’t do.

“I’m not that brave to go without that connection for that long, but they trust that these are the people that they are meant to be with, so they’ll do anything,” she said. “They’ll wait forever for somebody. I think that’s so beautiful and brave. I respect them so much.”

The stars said the tumultuous love story could strike a chord with college students.

“College-aged kids are finding each other, and it’s that whole challenge of actually realizing that this is really the person that you’re going to spend the rest of your life with,” she said.

“In our story, they met that young and it happens and it’s realistic and so that love can thrive if you let it.”

Critics have drawn comparisons to The Notebook and other coming-of-age romantic dramas.

But this movie isn’t a copycat and viewers won’t skip this movie, feeling like they’ve seen this kind of story a hundred times, Tatum said.

“Ours is definitely different,” he said. “When The Notebook came out, people were running to see that movie because I think there’s a real lack of movies like that.”

- Laura Sliva contributed to this article.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 03 February 2010 04:57 PM )

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