Film Review: Valentine’s Day

Romance is dead.  If Valentine’s Day (the day when florists’ dreams really do come true) hadn’t convinced you of that fact, perhaps the abomination that is Valentine’s Day (the movie, henceforth known as VD) will.  Let’s be clear, I’m not some owner of a Lonely Heart that’s gone bitter.  While I view the 14^th of February with a sneer of derision, I’m a sucker for a RomCom.  But even suckers draw a line when it comes to the quality of a cliché.  VD aims to be the US answer to Love Actually.  If the American war for independence had been fought over such ground I suspect things might have gone differently.

VD tracks the lives and loves of a handful of romantic hopefuls over one Valentine’s Day.  This includes the full range – teen romance, first dates, engagements and the eternally married.  For any more detail I must fall back to the method I can only assume the writers used.  Every time the makers of this film cast another big name star, I suspect they came up with a minor plot line for them that they could tenuously link to all the other strands of the film.  To create each character they decided that instead of giving three dimensions, they only needed three traits.

Some examples?  Ashton Kutcher is a florist, who loves love and is friends with Jennifer Garner.  Jennifer Garner is a school teacher, she’s got a new man in her life, as well as being friends with Ashton Kutcher.  Jessica Biel works in PR, is single and treats Valentine’s Day like an annual Armageddon she can only get through by gorging on chocolate.  Queen Latifah is Anne Hathaway’s boss, has a meeting with Jessica Biel and serves absolutely no purpose by being in this movie, other than adding her name to it.

Notice I’m not telling you their character names. That’s because they’re not relevant.  No character is given enough depth to make you care or relate.  I’ve never seen a film rely so entirely on the varying charms of its cast.  I say varying, because this movie includes Emma Roberts, famous for being related to Julia (Paris Hilton almost has more right to be famous, at least she made a movie most people have seen).  Julia’s in it too of course, so is half the male cast of Grey’s Anatomy.  In fact, anyone in Hollywood who wasn’t invited probably feels left out.

VD’s biggest problem is that Love Actually already did everything it’s trying to do better, and with an English accent.  So where Love Actually had empathetic characters that were legitimately linked into each other’s lives, VD has ciphers who you will find yourself inventing back story for in an effort to figure out how they fit in.  While Love Actually was set over several weeks, allowing for the heart-breaking, subtle revelation of an affair and giving Colin Firth the opportunity to learn some Portuguese, VD occurs in one day.  During that day two major characters start out in love, fall out of love, then find themselves in it again – who would actually like such changeable douches?  Finally, Love Actually has a climax, VD has a whimper, Jennifer Garner’s stupendously bad epiphany moment, and two otherwise irrelevant characters holding hands while on a swing.

There’s something even more basic missing from VD, and that’s a sense of place.  It may take you a while to figure out where it’s set, and that it’s all in one city.  That shouldn’t be something you have to work for.  Similarly, the lazy book-ending of the whole film with a radio host voice-over smacks of a desperate attempt to tie everything together in the editing suite.

What went wrong?  Did they blow the budget on casting, and sacrifice script and set design on the altar of Julia Roberts’s infectious smile?  I can’t imagine they paid anyone much compared to their usual rate, considering who they got.  The performances are mixed – Hathaway commits to her role which requires her to be an erotic phone service provider (come on Anne, you deserve better), Biel tries, Bradley Cooper is almost completely un-used, Big Roberts phones it in (because she can), and Little Roberts joins Jessica Alba on the scrapheap of people whose careers are taking too long to peter out.

I could rant about the horrendous stereotyping of women that abounds throughout VD, but then this review would be double in length.  It represents all females as desperate, lonely, clingy creatures defined by our relationships.  Apparently if we don’t have a date on the 14^th of February we should gather around a bonfire throwing mementos of past loves into the flames, bash the crap out of a heart piñata and then round out the evening by a group sing-a-long of ‘I Will Survive’.  Is this meant to be empowering?  It’s not.

Ultimately, VD will probably do very well at the box office.  I must admit, I really wanted to like this.  I was excited about the idea of a great RomCom packed with big names.  This is not great.  It probably shouldn’t be a surprise.  Hollywood has just about everything someone could need.  But there’s one thing it definitely lacks.  If Transformer’s 2, or the victory of Shakespeare In Love at the Oscars tells us anything, it’s that Hollywood has no shame.  This is shameless, and shamelessly bad.

Valentine’s Day has been released nationally in Australia

Director: Garry Marshall

Cast: Jessica Alba, Kathy Bates, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper, Eric Dane, Patrick Dempsey, Patrick Elizondo, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Topher Grace, Anne Hathaway, Ashton Kutcher, Queen Latifah, Taylor Lautner, George Lopez, Shirley Maclaine, Emma Roberts, Julia Roberts, Taylor Swift

Image credits 1, 2, 3