Review: Valentine’s Day

As the title suggests, a film following several characters, and their differing romance-related goings on largely in LA, on February 14^th. There’s florist Ashton Kutcher who has just proposed to girlfriend Jessica Alba. His best friend Jennifer Garner is an elementary school teacher in a relationship with doctor Patrick Dempsey, whom Kutcher learns something dubious about when he comes to his flower shop. Jamie Foxx is a not-so top TV sports reporter who is unhappy with the romantic puff piece his boss (Kathy Bates) has sent him out for. He strikes up a relationship with dateless PR gal Jessica Biel, whose biggest client (Eric Dane) is a quarterback off contract and set to make a significant announcement about his career and his life, much to the chagrin of his agent Queen Latifah. Anne Hathaway works for the intimidating Latifah and is dating Topher Grace, but is hiding a salacious second job from him. Julia Roberts and Bradley Cooper play strangers who start talking on a plane trip (she’s apparently a returning soldier), Taylor Swift and Taylor Lautner are a ditzy high school couple, Emma Roberts and Carter Jenkins are their friends who are trying to work up the courage to have sex with each other for the first time. At opposite ends of the age scale we have elderly couple Hector Elizondo and Shirley MacLaine uncovering shocking secrets after all these years, and elementary schooler Bryce Robinson wants Kutcher to deliver a very special valentine before the end of the school day. George Lopez is Kutcher’s happily married best friend, and Wendy Schaal is a high school teacher who learns TMI about her students. Did you get all that?

AKA “Consumerism, Actually”. This 2010 concoction of the supposedly romantic and comedic kind from director Garry Marshall (The overrated “Pretty Woman”, and “Beaches”, which wasn’t bad) is exactly like the holiday of the same name; Cynical, self-absorbed, total commercialism. It’s a way to get guys to spend oodles of cash on crap just to get themselves laid (Yes I am single. What’s your damn point?). And now there’s a frigging movie that serves the same damn purpose. Smart, that Garry Marshall, no doubt about it. But the film is a completely soulless, shoddy enterprise. Yes, “Love Actually” (a terrific film) was set around Christmas, which has its commercial aspects too, but that film was funny, warm, and had characters you cared about. And complete story arcs, for that matter. I almost hope screenwriter Katherine Fugate (“Carolina”, a forgettable flick co-starring Shirley MacLaine) had her work cut to pieces here, otherwise this is completely incompetent writing without any feeling for depth, flavour, or dramatic interest. It’s cardboard.

With so many famous faces in it (and merely for the purpose of being an all-star film- albeit most of these people are A- and B+ stars when you think about who’s not here) and so many characters and stories, only two of the characters and actors are afforded any depth beyond the single dimension. Some of the actors (George Lopez in particular) are merely playing supporting players in stories, not really getting their own tale (Some, like Kathy Bates, Joe Mantegna, and Larry Miller barely have cameos). Heck, some of the stories don’t even have a conclusion. Shoddy filmmaking. I mean, we never really find out what happens to the characters played by Alba and the two Taylors. Having said that, Taylors Lautner and Swift are such cataclysmically awful actors that I didn’t much care anyway. Singer Swift (who is a champion for not going all bitch-arse crazy on Kanye a few years back like she could justifiably have) plays a comedic ditz, but is so howlingly bad at it, that she’s funny in a completely unintended way. Lautner, a great oak tree of an actor, can’t even properly sell a “Twilight” in-joke about his penchant for going bare-chested on film. And what was with their dopey friends bragging to everyone about having sex? The scene where they horrify an obviously sexually repressed teacher (Wendy Schaal) with their coital plans was just completely stupid and unrealistic. No one behaves like that, not even in movies. Anne Hathaway is as gorgeous and likeable as ever on screen, but her story is frankly a little stupid, and her talent for accents is questionable, too. Dull as dishwater Topher Grace doesn’t help her out much, either. I liked that a real-life film featuring Shirley MacLaine was shown during a scene in the story strand with her character and Hector Elizondo, but their ‘hey, old people have sex too!’ strand is completely cliché. It’s always good to see the underrated Elizondo on screen, though.

Julia Roberts, who went 0-2 in the romantic stakes in 2010 after this and the insufferably self-absorbed “Eat Pray Love” is cast as an American soldier. Garry, I know you love Julia, but a soldier is one of many things that Julia Roberts will never, ever be convincing as. Another unfortunate piece of casting comes in the form of Patrick Dempsey. He plays a doctor, and apparently Garry Marshall is a fan of “Grey’s Anatomy” because he plays out practically the same story arc as he did in the first season of that show, albeit sped up considerably, and told entirely from the girl’s POV. That said, the best (and only good) thing in this entire film is the story strand involving Ashton Kutcher and Jennifer Garner. Kutcher’s OK, but Garner in particular is utterly adorable and thoroughly winning here. She isn’t enough to make the film even remotely tolerable, but she’s good enough to suggest that she’d be a lovely presence in another romantic film with a much better screenplay.

The film also isn’t terribly romantic, for a film with a title that seems to suggest the ultimate romance. I mean, look at the characters; There’s at least two cases of infidelity, one other couple with obvious honesty issues, one short-lived engagement, hell even the high schoolers are seemingly just interested in sex at first. What in the hell is romantic about any of this?

The only other interesting point to this film is in the “Love Actually”-style of overlapping stories, where you slowly find out that many of these people have connections to other characters in the film. A few of them were rather surprising to me, I won’t deny (Especially revelations made about two of the male characters in the film).

I’m sorry, but this is the film equivalent of shitty, cheap compound chocolate. It’s entirely flavourless and with no depth or texture whatsoever. Like the holiday, it’s a soulless money-making exercise. Thank God I didn’t pay to see it.

Rating: D