Get out your hankies out

Channing Tatum is John Tyree, a Army Special Forces soldier home on leave at the South Carolina shore. Amanda Seyfried as southern belle Savannah, drops her purse of a dock. When our hero dives in for it, what else could possibly happen except the too fall immediately into gushy PG-13 style love.

Nicholas Sparks' stories (ala "The Notebook") tend to be idealistic and beautiful and bittersweet, and this is no different. The characters are shining souls who no fault of their own find themselves in heartbreak.

John must return to duty, and then 9/11 happens - and every man in his unit reenlists. And finally, Savannah can wait no more, and our soldier gets the mail the title aludes to. She moves on with a new man, and it's sad little smiles all around about what could have been if only life had not gotten in the way.

The subtext of the plot is about how two very different people attract one another - she the pure daughter of a wealthy family with a southern mansion, who doesn't smoke, drink or cuss, and he the son of a quirky single father living in a humble cottage, with a bit of a dark past.

It's all so very sentimental and dreamy, nicely enough told, but utterly undemanding. Like all of Sparks' novels, grief hits early and often, wringing the tears out of the audience like dishrags. It starts from the very first scene, with our solider being wounded even before the flashback where he meets his soon-to-be-lost love. If you liked "The Notebook," "Message in a Bottle," and "A Walk to Remember," it may feel a bit recycled to you.

On the plus side, the filmmakers go to great pains to give the couple a straightforward decency in their romance - something that's seldom seen in the sex-charged mind of Hollywood. There is something appealing about it.

The stars are suitably beautiful, and seem to click together well, if not as perfectly as Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams from "Notebook."

Unfortunately, it wraps up in a fake and uncomfortable ending that you won't even find in the novel, and it makes what could have been a weepy but memorable movie something less - just another gimmick tearjerker.

* Our Score: Two stars out of five

"Dear John," Rated PG, now showing at the Vista III