A Worse Knockoff of The Notebook

Rating: 4/10 (5 May 2020)

Since The Notebook was popular and is a genuinely well-made film, of course that means the doors are blown open to lesser films being rushed out to try to capitalize on the new big thing.
I don't know if Dear John is the worst of these clone films, but it is strikingly lacking. This has mostly to do with the film having a lack of focus on themes and characters in particular. There are conflicts that go barely developed before they are suddenly and unceremoniously resolved and completely dropped as if they never happened and leaving little-to-no effect on the overall story. There are characters that are introduced that seem completely unnecessary; specifically, there is a character you meet in the very beginning of the film which, as soon as I saw him I thought to myself, "he dies off camera, doesn't he?" and as it turns out, I was right. Does his character mean anything at all to the film or characters and their development? No. You can erase most of the characters in this film from it and not miss any of the substance of the story. It simply feels like so much fluff- and the weird bait-and-switch in the introduction makes the film feel so unfocused.
The one thing I can say that does get, at least, some respectable amount of development in this film is the relationship between John and his father but, again, it's kind of filler- fairly inconsequential.
There's also this strange fixation this film has with people with autism- sometimes framing it as something cute which seemed a bit offputting to me. And as you can probably guess now, it has no bearing on the story or characters' development whatsoever.
There's a whole thing where John's past is brought up where we are told that he used to be pretty rough and violent but that goes completely unexplored. We are only told these things, but John is perfect now because he's in the military and he only lashes out on people who deserve it so it's alright. This one opportunity the film has to develop a character where we can see them grow and change into better version of themselves goes wasted. I guess it's good enough to have the big buff guy to squint his eyes a little and say that he has a dark past and expect that to be development enough for the intended audience demographic? Honestly, that's kind of insulting.
The problem with this film is that there is no reason to be invested in these characters and their relationship. They are both perfect, despite being told that they have their issues, those issues are never portrayed in their character- it's only talked about- and that does not make for interesting characters. At that point it doesn't really matter how good or bad the acting is, the characters have no real reason to change because all that changed happened before the film takes place.
All that said, the film isn't terrible. At worst it's pure chick-flick schlock and it could be worse than that. I would still recommend The Notebook over this, but I guess if you want a similar scenario of two lovers pulled apart by forces outside their control, and don't mind it being more contrived and fan fiction-esque, this is a film to consider. At the very least, it left me craving lasagna.