CINEMA: Valentine’s Day

Written by: Dee Pilgrim

Once upon a time St Valentine’s Day actually had some real emotional significance.

That was until, just like this film, it turned into a cynical marketing ploy to sell chocolates, roses and pink heart-shaped cards professing that the sender feels more love for a certain significant other than anyone, anywhere in the whole, wide world has ever felt before.

Film review of the terrible Valentine's Day

Directed by Garry Marshall, who used to make decent films, this is a hodge podge of a host of different characters, all connected to each other to some degree, navigating their way through one Valentine’s Day. There’s love-struck florist Reed (Ashton Kutcher) who has just proposed to live-in girlfriend Morley (Jessica Alba), his best mate Julia (Jennifer Garner) who thinks she has found Mr Right in the shape of a hunky doctor (Patrick Dempsey), and the TV reporter (Jamie Foxx) who would rather be covering sport than soppy love items.

Their stories (along with far too many others) meander through a typical LA day where the course of true love never runs smooth until the super tacky, treacle sweet ending when they all find their hearts’ desires.

What the viewer will find is one hideous mess of too many characters, too many different set ups and far too many happy coincidences. There are just so many stories here you never get a chance to know any of these people and what makes them really tick.

Worse still, this is meant to be a romantic comedy – however, the comedy element seems to have gone AWOL and will probably turn up in another movie entirely. It is not so much the fault of the huge ensemble cast so much as the unwieldy structure of the film itself. The only pairing that stands out as real, true and not some fake fairytale imagining is that between veteran actors Hector Elizondo and Shirley MacLaine as the long-time married couple concentrating on bringing up their grandson.

Valentine’s Day the film is less about love than trying to cram as many A-list stars onto the cast list as possible, never leaving any of them enough space to really shine, and that’s about as romantic as fake roses and cooking chocolate.

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Author: Dee Pilgrim

Dee always knew she wanted to make her living from writing and so trained as a journalist before working for a variety of music and women’s titles including Sounds, Company, Cosmopolitan, Ms London, New Woman, and Girl About Town. After going freelance she concentrated on celebrity interviews and film, theatre, music and restaurant reviews. Her love of film goes back to her very first cinema experience at the age of five when her mother took her to see Bambi. She cried. At one time she was the Film Editor for NOW magazine and also the secretary for the film section of the Critics’ Circle and the celebrity coordinator for its annual film awards’ event. She has written a number of books for teenagers through Trotman Publishing, including five Real Life Guides to vocational careers (including Carpentry, Plumbing and Catering), and also three books on Real Life Issues (Money, Bereavement and Self Harm). Her favourite film is still Bladerunner.

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