Written by: Katherine Fugate
Starring: Jessica Alba, Kathy Bates, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper, Eric Dane, Patrick Dempsey
Rating: [2/5]
Holidays present the opportunity to celebrate specific aspects of life during a dedicated framework of time provided. From giving thanks in November, gifts in December, and expression of love on Valentine’s Day. However, not everyone experiences the warm and fuzzies they should during the famous February holiday as we see through the various characters we follow in this aptly titled film. Unfortunately, this scattershot approach leaves not much to hold onto with various characters receiving unfulfilling arcs.
With Valentine’s Day hitting Los Angeles once again, floral shop owner Reed (Ashton Kutcher) proposes to his girlfriend Morley (Jessica Alba) and she says yes. As a day turns into a celebration of love Reed learns about his best friend, Julia’s (Jennifer Garner) ill-fated love to an unavailable man amongst all of the other relationships in this film.
If there’s one thing Hollywood will do it will take a successful idea and wring it dry for all it’s worth. By success, I’m talking financially here seeing as what we get with Valentine’s Day does not do so narratively but it sure made some money at the box office as it demonstrated what a movie can accomplish when you stuff just enough famous people into a project to drive the attention of moviegoers to peak their head in. While they do not receive a strong story, they surely get a bunch of famous people.
With many pairings in this feature, we get a whole host of individuals feeling Valentine’s love or blues as they navigate dating in different eras of life. We see this with young children discovering love all the way up to an elderly couple still finding ways to reignite theirs. On its best day, this idea had a chance to work and provide some meaningful exploration of love in all of its forms, but instead, we spend a few minutes at a time with all of these characters, who all somehow how have a slight level of connection bringing it all full circle. We don’t see the final connections until we reach the finale, but they make sure not to close every single one of those circles.
As we jump around each individual love story we essentially watch a truncated romantic comedy play out giving none of these actors the ability to make their characters even remotely interesting. The one we spend the most time with is Ashton Kutcher’s Reed as he navigates reckoning with a recent fiancé who decides she cannot handle taking the relationship to the next step. Therefore, we have a guy who essentially has his biggest day of the year as a florist in buying flowers where he cannot appreciate love. He, additionally, has a best friend who he’s meant to be with having a fling with a married man but she just does not know it yet. Other romantic comedy archetypes include Kelvin (Jamie Foxx) and Kara (Jessica Biel) as the very busy professionals making room for love or the coincidental meet-cute on a plane with Kate (Julia Roberts) and Holden (Bradley Cooper). Of course, there’s no way we can forget the budding young teenage love of Felicia (Taylor Swift) and Willy (Taylor Lautner). They provide just enough for each of these relationships to plant the seed of something worth watching, but unfortunately, the rug gets pulled from under us because the narrative becomes far too splintered.
In a sense trying to cram this many love stories into one ideal cohesive narrative comes across as something bold and ambitious but knowing ultimately how this all plays out displays this whole project as producers calling in all of their favors with celebrity talent to bring in as many A-listers as possible to fill the screen. Despite its efforts, we never receive a fulfilling narrative in Valentine’s Day with some of these individual love stories dragging down the rest in the way they just do not captivate in the manner in which they should. Instead, we’re left picking through the ones that intrigue us the most, and even those do not feel like they receive their time in the limelight to fully provide something worth watching. If all you want is to watch these A-Listers interact with each other then this film will give you what you want, but anything beyond that shows this to be a disappointment.
Films with Josh 
