Valentine's Day

Director: Gary Marshall
Writer: Katherine Fugate
Starring: Ashton Kutcher, Jennifer Garner, Emma Roberts
Release Date: February 12, 2009
Lengh: 2 hours 5 minutes

When almost all of Hollywood comes together for a movie, why does it have to be a badly written romantic comedy? Chick Flick director Gary Marshall (Pretty Woman) has assembled an impressively large cast of celebrities in Valentine’s Day. But the exciting stories get traded in for the exciting faces. I’m going to try to explain the plot of this movie, now, so don’t hold your breath. Ashton Kutcher plays Reed, the head of a flower shop, who proposes to his workaholic girlfriend Morley, played by Jessica Alba. Throughout the movie Reed delivers flowers to people with his co-worker Alphonso (George Lopez). Reed is a best friend with a schoolteacher named Julia (Jennifer Garner), who has recently started a relationship with a handsome surgeon (Patrick Dempsey). One of Julia’s 10 year old students, Edison is planning on delivering flowers to Julia, as he is in love with her. Edison is being taking care of by his ever-loving grandparents played by Hector Elizondo and Shirley Maclaine. Edison’s teenage babysitter Grace (Emma Roberts) is planning on having sex with her boyfriend Alex (Carter Jenkins) for the first time on Valentine’s Day. Their friends at school Felicia (Taylor Swift) and Willy (Taylor Lautner) have a cute relationship as well. Those are the main components of the film. If I explained anymore this would be a 12-page review. There are three major problems with having a large ensemble cast. The first is that each storyline gets cut down to 5 minutes and feels rushed. The second problem is that the more plots there are the more plots you aren’t going to care about and the third problem is that the more beautiful people there are on screen, the more you forget about certain storylines and begin to get extremely confused with who’s who. And due to the shortened screen time of each plot, some plots seemed completely pointless and that they were just there to show off more celebrities, like “hey, we have Jamie Foxx and Queen Latifah too!” Comparing this film to a similar romantic comedy that came out last year, He’s just not that into you, Valentine’s Day doesn’t have a main storyline that the audience can connect to. I suppose Ashton Kutcher’s character is the protagonist of the film, but his storyline involves 8 other characters, so the audience doesn’t know what the point is to his story. It is especially irritating that we are supposed to sympathize for beautiful women like Jessica Beil and Jessica Alba, that can’t get a date on Valentine’s Day. Let’s all feel bad for them while they are on the cover of every other magazine that comes out. Off the top of my head Jennifer Garner, Bradley Cooper, Anne Hathaway, Taylor Swift, and Ashton Kutcher had memorable performances in this movie that I quite enjoyed. Most of the other actors, I have nothing against but their story and their cheesy lines unfortunately drown out their good performances. This movie will definitely be a treat for women of all ages, with McSteamy (Eric Dane) and McDreamy (Patrick Dempsey) from Grey’s Anatomy and the hottest werewolf around, Taylor Lautner from New Moon. It’s unfortunate, but this film came off as just a way to promote every actor’s career, like Taylor Lautner, Taylor Swift, Patrick Dempsey and Bradley Cooper. Most of the actors in this mediocre movie wont take a hit to their careers because every one of them was only on screen for 20 seconds, so none of them were the stars of the movie. Director Garry Marshall did some great films, like Pretty Woman and Runaway Bride, but his recent films like Raising Helen and Georgia Rule, haven’t quite measured up to his previous work.