Valentine's Day
As the title of the movie suggests it celebrates or further emphasize the abundance of love that surrounds the world on this day. Its all flowers, candy and sweet things for those in love but for everyone else it's just a reminder that you have no one. The bitter jaded people may avoid the love fest in it entirety or campaign for its removal. "It's not even a real holiday!" claims Kelvin (Jamie Foxx). And on that note let’s actually talk about the movie rather me rant on the flaws of the most "romantic" day of the year.
Valentine's Day is a romantic comedy - well no shit. It has been advertised extensively and any movie goer probably knows what the general premise of the movie is. So I will not bore with the details but I feel I'm required to at the very least to give a summary of sorts. There are about a million characters in this film (a gross exaggeration?), so I will cover as many of them as possible. There is the love sick florist (Ashton Kutcher), single and lonely career women (Jessica Biel), the wise Latino man (George Lopez), the teenagers who are about to have sex for the first time (Emma Roberts), the old couple and the lonely footballer, the cute school teacher who doesn't know better (Jennifer Garner) and the lying, cheating, and wealthy doctor (Patrick Dempsy - kind of sounds like his Grey's Anatomy character) and others that need not to be mentioned.
I know what you’re thinking I just outlined a bunch of character descriptions based on stereotypes rather then give you an outline of the story. Well since it’s a highly predictable and overly done premise it would be pointless to actually give the story but rather go straight to verdict.
As one might have notice from the negative overtone of this review, I wasn't overly impressed by this film at all. For one thing the concept of multiply stories of love and lost have been done before and better as well, there was Love Actually and He's Just Not That Into You.
There were a few charming quirks in between from the better rounded characters such as Biel's single lady and Foxx's reporter and even Lopez's wise funny man (who was ignored in the trailers despite the fact he was in the film for quite a bit). It wasn't all too bad, that's because I simply wasn't holding out for outstanding and ground breaking entertainment. It’s light and fluffy portrayal of relationships is grossly glossed over by unnecessary happy endings and without doubt "Hollywoodised" hence devoid of any realism.
The general watching experience was a little irritating - each scene kept cutting into another scene feeling like the pervious scene hadn't quite finished yet and make you think, what the hell, did that scene just finish? Whether it was affect or simply bad editing I cannot be sure of. Regardless of intention I found confusing and unnecessary and if it was for affect it failed to engage me but rather enrage me (lol it didn’t really but it sounded nice).
So the final verdict – you get for what you pay for – in a sense. Basically cheap quirks every now and then will keep you entertained but lack of depth in characters and originality in stories will eventually bore you and wished the movie would finish quickly so you can move on with your life. Would I recommend it? Well only if you plan to have a girl night accompanied by heavy drinking.
Images from Rotton Tomatoes & Wiki
