By Guthrie Roy Hartford | Web Manager
The premise of Valentine’s Day is thoroughly enjoyable, seeing how the overall plot constantly elaborates on how pointless this Hallmark holiday really is. The one thing that really baffles me about Valentine’s Day is the abundance of star power that it brings to the table. There are nineteen different actors and/or actresses in this flick that can potentially call themselves stars. My question simply is: How did other flicks manage successful casting while Valentine’s Day was filming? Hollywood must have gone on a thirty or some odd day vacation just so this movie could be made. You have well-known names such as Anne Hathaway, Jamie Foxx, Ashton Kutcher, Kathy Bates, Jessica Alba, Jennifer Garner, George Lopez, Bradley Cooper, Jessica Biel, Taylor Lautner and Julia Roberts among many others that are gridlocked into this hectic date flick that focuses on bad lunches and infidelity.
One element that this movie fails to accomplish is character dimensionality. As the flick opens and progresses the audience quickly learns that all these characters strive to be three-dimensional, but sadly enough never make it that far. They are all very two-dimensional and ultimately lack depth. But I was oddly okay with this because that wasn’t what the film was trying to accomplish. It was unnecessary and irrelevant to get to know these people and couples on a personal level. What was Valentines Day’s dramatic need? When you’re watching this flick, think about what they are really trying to tell us. They are simply just showing us that Valentine’s Day is one day out of the year where countless couples try and make it a flawless or perfect and/or romantic day, nothing more and nothing less. Everyone wants to be in love and wants someone to love on this day and of course someone to love them back equally. But what usually happens when people coerce certain aspects in specific situations? Things start to fall apart, go in the opposite direction, and ultimately whatever you planned for in the beginning is not what you’re going to get in the end.
I’m not even going to attempt to tell you where or how they went about the storyline to this flick. Let’s just say it involved about six different couples who are all undoubtedly intertwined with one another. You obviously have your main couple who just got engaged, and one of them is best friends with this girl who is dating this older guy, who is shockingly enough already married with kids who happens to be a fan of this famous football player who evidently goes publicly gay, and just happens to have a gay lover who we think is straight that meets this attractive girl on a plane and flirts with throughout the entire movie, when in fact this attractive girl from the plane has a son who’s in the fifth grade and has his first crush on his teacher when his teacher just happens to be the best friend of the engaged couple, that I initially mentioned.
Reiterating from before, this flick is simply trying to tell us not to have obligations for certain days out of the year. Go with the flow, let the good times roll, and most importantly do things of your own volition and don’t just do it to impress other people or to try and get a rise out of them. Do as it will benefit you in the long-run and hopefully someone that you truly do love. As George Lopez wisely puts it while trying to give advice to his co-worker Ashton Kutcher, “You don’t step into love, you fall into love.”
Valentine’s Day is marketed as a date movie. If I were you, I wouldn’t take a date or someone that you really do like to a film like this, because they probably won’t want anything to do with you after the fact. Don’t get me wrong, this was an enjoyable flick, only if you go see it with your mother, your sibling, or maybe even your best friend because then you can both laugh together at all the horrible experiences you’ve ever had with an exboyfriend, girlfriend or significant other.
Valentine’s Day has received 3.5 stars out of 5.
Comments are closed.