.5 out of 5 stars

If the title just flew by you like that (fwing!), let BestFlick.com tell you again — the movie Valentine’s Day is all fluff and nothing much else. Even we felt bad about the half-a-star we gave it on the rating.

Here’s the deal — you have a bunch of A-List stars at your disposal, but Garry Marshall proceeds to waste all that in a totally predictable and lame romantic comedy (sans the comedy, we think). His past movies, all notable because they were funny (Pretty Woman, Runaway Bride, The Princess Diaries), strengthens the growing opinion that Garry Marshall films HAVE to be funny, else they fall flat. This one did.

Valentine's Day - NOT one to watch

I am literally in pain right now, so let me go through my points quickly.

The list of stars in this movie is probably what reeled you in — this is what did us in, too. Jamie Foxx, Jessica Biel, Jennifer Gardner, Eric Dane, Patrick Dempsey, Ashton Kutcher (meh), Anne Hathaway, Julia Roberts — I mean, how could you go wrong, right? It turns out that Garry Marshall (and probably scriptwriter Katherine Fugate) knew exactly how.

The skits were trite and unoriginal. The dialogue was machine-gunned with cliches, as though a huge amount of them would suddenly make it OK for us to hear them. The jokes were not jokes, in that they weren’t funny at all. The star talent on display was wasted on a level that was short of insulting. It felt like they hired A-List stars to hand out fluff, and do nothing much else.

I guess we have to say some positive things or else risk sounding like a heartless bunch. We at BestFlick.com don’t mind sappy love stories once in a while, but this one really took the cake for being that bad. I suppose because it was Valentine’s Day when we watched it, there was an abnormal amount of tolerance for fluff. But we weren’t expecting it to be this bad, I mean Ashton Kutcher-bad. OK, we’re not being nice again.

Anne Hathaway - lovely, anywhere you put her

Let’s see. There were a couple of things that made this bearable. Anne Hathaway, for one, is pretty amazing (and hot, and amazing, and hot…) anywhere you put her. And Jessica Alba’s fine errr… tan. And Jennifer Gardner looking suspiciously hot for Ashton’s platonic “best friend” type. Oh, these are all about babes. Yeah, well, we had to resort to this just for us to be able to finish the film. And oh yeah, that Julia Roberts line (in the blooper reel, with the credits!) alluding to her breakout role in Pretty Woman.

Apart from that, there’s nothing much here to see. If you really want it, buy it in DVD, and watch it in your external DVD drives. No need to get this in Blu-ray disc, no need to stash it in your “best movies” folder in your portable hard drive. No need for that. Buy it in DVD, or borrow someone else’s DVD and watch it.

Filed under: Movie Reviews