Review by Loc
You know what would be great? A fun, relevant look at love on a day celebrated for romance: Valentine’s Day. How about taking, I don’t know, 5 or 6 stories, and putting them on film. In fact, let’s make them semi-realistic, some will be good, some will be sad, some will be funny, all will be about love. And let’s have some intersection, too, sorta like Crash did with random characters actually being connected. We can have things like siblings or friends, chance encounters, all that stuff. And let’s make it an all-star cast, let’s get some of the bright, young Hollywood faces on the screen playing bit roles in a huge ensemble! This is great! What? They did that in Love Actually? Quick hit: so, we can do it American!
I’m guessing this is what the pitch sounded like. Or maybe it went, hell if it worked for Christmas in London, let’s make it…Valentine’s Day in…Los Angeles. Sold and sold! And commence with poorly conceived characters in shallow situations with actors exuding little charisma. Sold again!
Yes, Valentine’s Day is little more than a bad knockoff of its English predecessor. Only, where the English version had fun characters, interesting tidbits, and an overall likeability, Valentine’s Day exhibits none of them. Replace fun characters with self-involved caricatures, interesting tidbits with mundane clichés, and overall likeability with overall repulsiveness, and you get an idea of what you’re dealing with in this movie.
Stars include Jennifer Garner as a kind-hearted schoolteacher, Patrick Dempsey as her lovable doctor beau, Ashton Kutcher as vaguely vacuous flower show proprietor, Jessica Alba as his career-oriented soon-to-be-fiance, Jessica Biel as slightly neurotic publicist, Eric Dane as handsome athlete, and Jamie Foxx as local sportscaster. Throw in a pinch of Bradley Cooper and Julia Roberts on a plane ride, and you have yourself an ensemble.
Now, throw all these characters into various relationship clichés: married man secretly cheating on wife and kids with unknowing beauty, love-scorned woman holding black-hearted Valentine’s Dinner, budding romance from chance encounter, and seemingly happy couple on the verge of unseen breakup.
Lastly, have ensemble pick parts like they were drafting in a fantasy football team, and you get an idea of how well these actors filled their roles. There is so little investment into these characters that it’s hard to understand why you’re supposed to care at all. While Love Actually started with a similar premise, the characters at least exhibited some bits of engagement to push the film along. Even if you hated the movie, you could at least watch it on some level. Valentine’s Day doesn’t reach this level, making a bunch of semi-intertwining stories a bore to get through.
Overall, this flick is a poor attempt at the model. Sure, you have all the pieces, from ensemble cast to random stories, but this is like someone cooking from a recipe. Just because you have the ingredients doesn’t mean you’re going to produce anything that’s remotely interesting or edible. Out of 14 chocolate hearts, Valentine’s Day strikes out with 4 candies.
Rated: 3/10
