DEAR JOHN / The LAST SONG

“The LAST SONG” / “DEAR JOHN”

The only movie out that I wanted to see, my wife didn’t (Repo Men) so I decided to give her Easter & knock off these two chick flicks that she wanted to see. It was, as expected, Eastertime in hell...
We started with the newer ‘Last Song’ for the early bird special & then glided over to East Valley for the $3 ‘Dear John’ ($18 for 4 tickets, from that aspect, I got off cheap) My wife asked me as we left the second film, ‘which one was better?’
I said, “This one.” “Why?” “Because I don’t remember what the first one was.”
It wasn’t a joke; I had to think for a moment to recall the movie we had seen just a few hours earlier. When I remembered, the answered held, “Dear John” is much better than ‘The Last Song” - & that’s not to say ‘Dear John’ won’t be a candidate for my Bottom 10.
I wasn’t aware until later that both films were based on books by the same author – who also wrote “The Notebook”, which I liked (up until that ridiculous ending)
These are chick flicks to the maximum – but Dear John has noticeably better acting and isn’t quite as sappy & cookie cutter as ‘Last Song’.
So I’ll start with the older film.
In ‘Dear John’, the perpetually mundane Channing Tatum plays ‘John’ / Amanda Seyfried plays the letter writing Savannah, a girl John meets two weeks before he is to be sent to Iraq (John’s an army man)
Richard Jenkins plays John’s distant father, though they live in the same house – Dad is overly occupied with his coin collection to the point of being obsessed. Savannah insults John by suggesting his father might have autism, but when John starts paying more attention to dad after the statement, he sees that she may be right.
Henry Thomas plays Tim, a friend of Savannah’s. Tim’s autistic son Alan takes an instant liking to John, which of course is ‘amazing’ because Alan doesn’t speak to anyone until he gets to know them. This is meant to make us believe that John is someone ‘special’, but yet the first chance he gets to lose his temper & exhibit ultra-violent behavior – John goes apes**t. He is, after all, a military man.
After their whirlwind romance, John goes overseas & the film sinks to the boring letter reading montage as John & Savannah exchange communiqués.
SPOILER ALERT! – This movie wasn’t exactly winning me over, but it wasn’t ‘stupid’ until John is forced to come home due to a situation arising with his father. He confronts Savannah with “Why didn’t you call me?” & she yells, “Is THAT why you came back here?”
He came back because of his dad, you thoughtless b*tch & you were so selfish you didn’t even care enough to stay in touch with the old man... That was my thought as this scene of heavy drama played out.
So by the end of the film, you really don’t have anyone to cheer for – You definitely don’t want John & Savannah to end up together because that would mean that John has no self respect, dignity or testicles. But due to the fact that it doesn’t have your conventional ‘chick flick’ sappy happy ending, I’d have to say ‘Dear John’ is a notch or two above the norm for the genre...
“The Last Song” is not. It is chick flick sickening from beginning to end with very little to recommend, & yet I don’t really feel like bashing it. I’ve never seen Miley Cyrus do anything before so all I know about her now is that she has no future in acting – Stick to whatever made you famous, sweetheart, or channel all your time & energy into acting lessons because you can’t make a career in movies by just being cute... What am I talking about, of course you can! & I will grant her that - she does have a certain likeability without displaying much talent (Probably why I don't feel like bashing her)
Miley plays Veronica (Ronnie) a musical protégé until dad divorces mom (Greg Kinnear & Kelly Preston) & she stops playing the piano & turns down an offer to attend Julliard.
As Mom prepares to re-marry, she sends Ronnie & her little brother Jonah off to spend the summer with dad at his beach house.
With Jonah, there is no happy medium, this kid is either overly enthusiastic or bawling his eyes out in sorrow – In other words, he doesn’t come across as a ‘real’ character. Do we blame the inexperienced kid for over-acting, or the script which called for him to be one or the other in every scene he’s in?
Here’s the first hour of the movie in a nutshell; Before the story starts there are 2 musical montages (from here on known as mm’s)
Kids arrive at dads - Ronnie goes for a walk along the beach (mm)
Ronnie gets knocked over by volleyball playing Will (mm)
Ronnie stops a raccoon from eating sea turtle eggs on the beach, stays up all night to protect them (mm)
Will shows up as a volunteer from the aquarium & sets up a protective net for the eggs (mm)
Will invites Ronnie to meet his parents (mm)
Will’s family is filthy rich, but with a dark cloud hanging over it (sad mm)
Ronnie is moved to show Will that she can play the piano – but first she must take 30 seconds to tie back her hair in slow motion – after all, you wouldn’t want her hair to get in the way while she plays, right? (mm)
Will gets into fight at his sister’s wedding (Oh no, he has a violent temper!)
The sap runs so thick in this film it should have been set in the forests of Vermont.
The screenplay simply jumps from one clichéd scene to the next with very little connections. To give you an idea how idiotic it is – Will’s best friend Scott was witness to a crime but he was also involved in it – When Will begs him to step forward so the real culprit pays for his deed, Scott is adamant about not taking a chance of ruining his future. A few scenes later, Will shows up at Scott’s workplace and says ‘Please’ & nothing else. Scott instantly changes his mind about his future & confesses... Huh? Oh, and (mm)
I didn’t realize until the credits rolled that Greg Kinnear’s character’s name was Steve Miller... Then why in the heck did we have to suffer thru all those cheesy teen pop mm’s when they could have used “Fly Like An Eagle”, “Rock’n Me” & “The Joker”?
But unfortunately, in the end, “The Last Song” was just a boring piece of background music... Literally.