VALENTINES DAY is heavy on actors but light on love, actually

Rating:

He's Just Not That Into You was a decent hit for Warner Bros. last year. It was about boys & girls, had about 10 actors in it, and was made up of a bunch of small interconnected stories. It was Love Actually without the "actually." Naturally, Warner Bros. wanted another February hit. Their idea: make the same movie again, just bigger. Valentines Day has twice as many stars (about 20), bigger names, and interweaving storylines that are more complex. It's all in an effort to teach us something about Valentines Day. What that something is, well, I don't think even the writers know. 

Traditionally, I talk a bit about the plot here, but Valentines Day is basically 14 (by my count) little stories all strung together. There's a story about a reporter (Jamie Foxx) who doesn't believe in love; there's one about a doctor (Patrick Dempsey) who doesn't know what it means; there's one about a guy and a girl on a plane together (Bradley Cooper, Julia Roberts); there's one about a florist (Ashton Kutcher) who gets engaged to his girl (Jessica Alba); there's one about a teenage couple who are planning to deflower each other; there's one about a ditzy cheerleader (Taylor Swift) who gets a bear from her boyfriend (Taylor Lautner) that's practically life-size; there's even a story about a woman (Anne Hathaway) who runs a phone sex line on her off-hours. There are a lot of stories.

In fact, the most fun you'll have watching Valentines Day is counting all the different stories and figuring out how they're all connected. It's a pretty fun game, really. I wish there was a winner. Unfortunately, these characters and their stories are just pieces on a chess board; a full chess board where love always wins. It's fun to point them out and look at them, but most are forgettable. The only actors who come out better than they entered are Ashton Kutcher and Topher Grace. These guys haven't been in many films lately and they use their screen time better than most, Kutcher especially.

We also learn that Taylor Swift, Taylor Lautner (Twilight: New Moon) can't act. Swift has an excuse: she's a singer. Lautner does not--he just became the highest paid actor in Hollywood, earning $7-8 million per film by taking roles most actors would never touch. He's going to play Max Steel and Stretch Armstrong, two films based on male-oriented gimmicky toy-lines in the mid-90s. Judging from his performance in Valentines Day, which was exactly like his performance in New Moon, ladies like to look at him, but no one likes it when he opens his mouth.

Director Gary Marshall (Pretty Woman) plays it safe, but forgets that children can't act. Young Bryce Robinson plays a little boy who wants to give his girlfriend flowers, and has far too much dialogue. He speaks like an adult, which creeps me out. His performance is a lot like Jake Loyd's as young Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. I'm sure there are some children that really talk as if they already know it all (Dakota Fanning), but there's no reason we have to film them. Really, it's poor writing, poor casting, and poor directing.

Creepy child acting aside, Valentines Day is perfectly watchable and definitely covers its chosen holiday extensively. It's fun to watch a bunch of interconnected story arcs come together. Unfortunately, it has nothing to say and no real laughs. I have no reason to ever watch it again. None of these characters have unique stories, nor are they themselves particularly worth watching. Perhaps that is why this film is packed with a cast of more than 20. Warner Bros. is hoping that if they keep changing the subject and showing us a new pretty face or cool trick, we won't notice that Valentines Day spends two hours to say less than a Hallmark card.