Valentine's Day D

Valentine's Day is like the "According To Jim" of Romantic Comedies- a film so witless and insipid you wonder how it got made in the first place. The film functions more as a stimulus package for actors in hollywood since the cast seems to feature half the working actors today (at least those who have graced a magazine cover in the past few years.) No one character develops beyond a one line sketch. Ashton Kutcher is the florist who still believes in love, Jennifer Garner is a perky elementary school teacher and his best friend, Jessica Biel is a harried lonely P.R. Flack, Julia Roberts is an army soldier trying to get home for Valentine's Day and so on and so on and so on. We even get geezer love in the form of Shirley McClaine and Hector Elizando.

The film takes place in some hackneyed greeting card netherworld where the whole world revolves around Valentine's Day and every single character mentions it in just about every conversation they have. At one point early in the film, Kutcher actually says "Love is the last shocking thing in the world today." From there, we get an endless stream of relationship bon mots that would have to improve to be sitcom level insights. Sure, there are relationship entanglements and disappointments and betrayals but they're the kind that be easily wrapped up with a little shoddy writing and yet another race to the airport.

Going into this movie I didn't expect believability, and I didn't expect it to be a great love story for all time. But I did expect professionalism and enough charm and wit to make the familiar situations go down easy. Instead this Valentine's Day confection just gave me indigestion like an off brand chocolate sampler you picked up at a dollar store.