Never have I fallen asleep so many times during a movie

Rating: 1/10 (8 January 2012)

Never have I fallen asleep so many times during a movie. Perhaps it was my brain's defence mechanism, hoping to protect me from the cerebral poison of the worst kind of chick-flick, or perhaps my mind was attempting to kill itself, sending me to the suicide of sleep, but either way I fell asleep eight times during the film. I would have missed it entirely, but my wife kept nudging me awake to inform me that I was snoring loudly. The plot, if such a word is appropriate, was the ubiquitous boy-meets- girl, problem arises, obstacle is overcome, happy ending. How many times can they make this movie? I knew from five minutes in to the film what was going to happen and I had to repress the desire to turn around and address the audience, like a movie messiah, hollering that this film was a repeat, that the ending was proscribed, that we should immediately demand they change the reels and offer us another film in its place. However, in the insane world we live in, this kind of free speech is not considered appropriate, and instead I sat in silence, nodding in and out of the movie hell. Satre only believed that Hell was other people because he hadn't kept waking up in this movie. Like a bear hibernating through its first zoo winter, I wondered if I would ever be free of it. The protagonist is the incongruously named Channing Tatum. I would make a joke about that name, but it's funny enough in itself: Channing Tatum. What kind of drugs were his parents on? He is what I believe the average teenage girl would describe as a hunk and this is presumably why he was chosen for the role. It certainly could not be for his taciturn delivery and expressionless face. And let's face it, he looks good in a uniform — a real Action Man physique. Channing, or the 'John' of the title, is in the Special Forces, and travels the world's hot spots giving candy to children and shooting their parents. His squad have equally large necks and broad shoulders, and he is torn between his loyalty to them and his love for the female lead. Of course, that's a no-contest win for the girl, so then 9-11 is thrown in, and we have love of one's country versus the girl, and if that country is America, then the all-American hero just has to sign up for another two-year term, and deliver what to me was the only funny line in the film, "I'm going to extend." The actions of the plastercine beau, needless to say, peeves the female lead, Savannah, played by the woman with largest eyes in the world, Amanda Seyfried. Suffering the pangs of disprized love, she marries someone else, but we are later informed that this was only because he had cancer and his son was autistic –isn't that always the way? Tying this overcooked spaghetti together was the motif of epistolary love. After an initial two-week summer romance, the distant lovers commune through hundreds of heartfelt hand-written letters, since the American Special Forces don't have internet and it hasn't occurred to Amanda that she could write it on Word and then press print. The film could have inadvertently raised an important issue here though. I mean, could the Americans current military problems be due in part to their lack of a satellite broadband connection? It could help them with the jihadists and as well as eliminate time lags for these star-crossed lovers. However, it was nice to see the epistolary form rising from its eighteenth century ashes, and perhaps this bodes well for my recent novel, Letters from the Ministry, and its missive-writing protagonist, S Fox, who also eschews more modern forms of communication. Plugs aside, this was a truly awful movie, and I needed several pints to help me forget it, which I shall be billing to Messers Tatum and Seyfriend. "Dear John, I love you": Dear God, please help me.