I've come to the conclusion that, with the exception of Point Break, for every scene you place on a beach, your movie ends up 10% more boring.

I think this has a lot to do with the rhythms of the beach itself.

-- Local show times, theaters, trailer.

Hop in the ocean and stand there shivering with the waves just below your nipples, then jump out five minutes later after you finally admit it's too cold or get scared because you can't see under the surface where you're probably about to get attacked by a twenty-tentacled horror from the abyss. Spend 40 minutes lying in the sand pretending you're good-looking enough to expose your almost-naked body to the public eye. When the skin starts to peel from you like the layers of a mushy onion, shiver back into the tides for five more minutes. Repeat.

Other than the chance of a freak wave rolling in to snatch up loose-leashed dogs or bikini tops, it's hardly a high-tension setting. Bear this in mind next time you're wondering how anything featuring so much bare skin can be so untitillating, as with Dear John.

On leave from special forces in the spring of 2001, Channing Tatum runs into Amanda Seyfried on the Charleston, S.C. beach. Neither is in position for a relationship — Tatum is due back in two weeks, and Seyfried will return to college after the summer — but they fall for each other. Hard.

They keep in touch through letters, making plans to get back together when Tatum's tour ends in a year. 9/11 changes everything. When Tatum decides to extend his tour at the risk of their relationship, making it work isn't going to be easy.

Then again, neither is sitting through Dear John. Not that it's outright, screamingly terrible. If anything, it's the opposite: kinda OK, kinda OK and then it's 30 minutes later and you're not really annoyed by anything, but you're still waiting for the interesting stuff to show up because come on already.

Then you're lulled back in, one pleasant moment at a time. This movie is so gentle you could ship kittens in it. Director Lasse Hallstrom is an old enough hand to keep it moving from A to B without any obvious flubs, but what's missing is any kind of spark. (Why yes, that is a gloriously lazy pun on source novelist Nicholas Sparks' name. Thanks for asking!)

I've never totally understood what people mean when they say the romantic leads lack chemistry — how are they judging this, exactly? Number of times their pants tent up during the screening? — but you could apply that criticism to Tatum and Seyfried, who turn in decent individual performances without finding much of one as a couple.

This may be because so much of Dear John is static. They meet, have a good time, walk around with their hands wedged so deep in each others' pockets their skin becomes melded to the denim, etc. Meanwhile any signs of trouble or tension are off napping under a tree. Without any challenges to overcome, their characters come off as boring. That and they are boring. Try telling a joke sometime, people.

Tranquilized, perhaps, by all that inoffensive dullness, I expected the plot would be much more predictable than it ended up. I'll admit a third-act curveball or two softened me up. It should be hateable, but Dear John is the kind of movie that grows on you, if only because you have to spend so damn much time with it along the way.

Grade: C