'Valentine's Day' overstuffed with stars
"Valentine's Day" might boast the most shirtless dudes we've seen in a movie since "300." Ironically, the often bare-chested "Twilight" star Taylor Lautner isn't one of them.
If this Hallmark card of a film didn't already make it clear, the beefy bodies of "Valentine's Day" does: This is a movie aimed squarely at women and, one supposes, their unfortunate dates.
Set in Los Angeles, the film begins with the baritone voice of a "DJ Romeo Midnight" announcing that in honor of Valentine's Day, he's going to play "the songs you love and the songs you love to love to." He barley spins a winner the rest of the movie, but, then again, the aphrodisiacs are in the cast.
We have Ashton Kutcher as a pink-clad florist, paired with his reluctant fiance, played by Jessica Alba. Jennifer Garner, a teacher, is matched with a cheating Patrick Dempsey. Anne Hathaway, paying the bills as a phone sex operator, is falling for Topher Grace.
Teen love is represented in the pairs of Emma Roberts and Carter Jenkins, and Lautner and Taylor Swift, making her feature film debut as a bouncy airhead. Our elderly couple is Shirley MacLaine and Hector Elizondo. We also get a little puppy love in a fifth grader played by Bryce Robinson.
Our freelancers include Jamie Foxx as a cynical sports reporter, Kathy Bates as his boss, Eric Dane as a Brett Favre-esque retiring quarterback, Queen Latifah as his agent, Jennifer Biel as his publicist, George Lopez as a happily married man (whose wife is the only one virtually left out of the movie's pairings), Bradley Cooper as a jet-set businessman, and his airliner seatmate Julia Roberts, absurdly playing an Army captain on leave of duty.
To say that "Valentine's Day" is overstuffed would be an understatement. Not only does it ooze stars like clowns spilling out of a clown car, but it's gauzily wrapped in roses and red-and-white cards.
To his credit, director Garry Marshall juggles the many overlapping story lines successfully, though "Valentine's Day" is obviously strained by the excess.
"Valentine's Day" is exactly what it professes to be: an overdose of sentimentality. You certainly can't mistake it, as one confused fifth grader in the film does, for anything related to the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. But the reference is enough to make you wish for "Scarface," or, if love is still on the menu, "Some Like It Hot."
<B>TITLE:</B> “Valentine’s Day”<B>CAST:</B> Julia Roberts, Ashton Kutcher, Jamie Foxx, Bradley Cooper, Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Kathy Bates<B>DIRECTOR: </B>Garry Marshall<B>RATED: </B>PG-13 for some sexual material and brief partial nudity<B>GRADE:</B> 2 Stars (out of 5)
