It’s a Valentine’s Day Massacre
By Molly Yarnevich

If you are one of the many who think that Valentine’s Day is a contrived, commercial holiday, Warner Brothers has given you a movie to reinforce your thinking. “Valentine’s Day” is an utterly unoriginal picture.

The movie follows many loosely connected people in Los Angeles to see how they handle the trials and tribulations of Valentine’s Day. Some are single and cynical, like Kara (Jessica Biel). Some are hopeful and happy, like Reed (Ashton Kutcher). Some are in-between. All are fairly uninspired. To be sure, this movie boasts a star-studded cast: Bradley Cooper, Julia Roberts, George Lopez, Jennifer Garner, McDreamy and McSteamy both from Grey’s Anatomy (Patrick Dempsey and Eric Dane, respectively), to name just a smattering. Most of them are in bit roles. And most of them phoned in their performance.

It’s a sad day when a movie with this much potential talent (Shirley MacClain is in here, for crying out loud!), has Ashton Kutcher bringing the most energy and charm to the screen. This movie is reminiscent of another romantic comedy that has interwoven storylines and follows a handful of Brits in their search for love. That movie is “Love Actually”. That movie is good. Let’s see exactly why this “Valentine’s Day” is a massacre.

1. It tries to do too much and connect too many dots to too many people. This film has 20+ characters that are or become connected throughout this 135 minute exercise in futility. Many are already shallow Los Angelinos and those who are not seem so because we only get to know them briefly. I recall the names of only 6.

2. It’s not funny. Just poorly written by Katherine Fugate, Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein. Apart from Ms. Kohn and Mr. Silverstein’s work on “He’s Just Not That Into You” (which was decent), these three have nothing on their resumes worth noting.

3. It’s unoriginal. As I said earlier, this has been done, and done very well before. “Love Actually” is clever and its characters are interesting and engaging and funny...

4. It fails to engage the audience. This movie failed to draw me in and give me any reason to care how its characters sort out their situations. I didn’t care if anyone found love.

5. It’s very predictable. I saw the “surprise” connections from miles away, so this convention was wasted on me. And frankly, I was annoyed when I thought of the writers feeling clever and smug as they connected their dots on paper before subjecting me to them on screen.

These are the highlights of the lowlights. I must also mention that the music was unremarkable. The setting (Los Angeles) was trite, but I will say that in not bothering to clean up the city much, at least it looked realistic for a change. I could go into more detail about these characters and their storylines, but I simply don’t care. It just doesn’t warrant noting. It would be a waste of my time. Just as seeing this movie would be a waste of yours.

0 popcorn tubs
Running time: 1 hr 57 min
Rated: PG-13