Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to act like a complete cliché and watch Valentine’s Day… on Valentine’s Day…with my boyfriend (poor thing). In hindsight, I should have realised that this was a mistake. The couples (ok, women) sitting around me were incessantly ooh-ing and ah-ing at the screen, and the movie just wasn’t very good.
I was a little disappointed because I’m a big fan of all-star ensemble-cast movies like Love Actually and He’s Just Not That Into You (which I happened to watch last Valentine’s Day. What is wrong with me?). And Valentine’s Day includes a lot of big names: Jessica Biel, Ashton Kutcher, Jennifer Garner, Queen Latifa, Anne Hathaway, Topher Grace, Jamie Foxx, Julia Roberts, Patrick Dempsey (a true A-list celebrity), Bradley Cooper, Taylor Swift, that hideous guy from Twilight that Twilight fans seem to want to jizz all over for some reason, and many more that I can’t remember because their performances were just not that memorable.
So, what exactly was wrong with the movie? For starters, there wasn’t any character development, so I wasn’t really all that concerned about how things would turn out. I honestly couldn’t have cared less if someone had killed Ashton Kutcher with a chainsaw as he arrived at the airport to stop Jennifer Garner from leaving. It might have improved the storyline somewhat if they had. And the director, Garry Marshall of “The Other Sister” fame (I say this because it is literally the only other movie on his IMDb page that I recognise) tried, and failed, to create even the slightest bit of chemistry between Jessica Biel and Jamie Fox. It felt unbelievably contrived and awkward. When they finally kissed I felt my popcorn/Slush Puppy mix coming back up. And surprisingly, the only true chemistry that I felt throughout the entire movie was between Julia Roberts and Bradley Cooper, whose character turned out to be gay… with Mc Steamy.
Now I’m not going to be completely negative. Taylor Swift’s ditsy airhead character was pretty darn funny.
So, now that I’ve given you a list of the pros and cons, you can decide for yourself whether the movie’s worth watching.