Valentine's Day

Love Punk’d! - Jennifer Garner and Ashton Kutcher in Valentine’s Day
 
Time Investment: 90 min.
Return on Investment: 20 min.
 
Probably the best thing one can say about Valentine’s Day is that it’s not as bad as it looks. An ensemble rom-com from Garry Marshall (Pretty Woman) with a no-brainer title doesn’t inspire the highest expectations. The appealing cast—everyone from Julia Roberts and Shirley MacLaine to Jennifer Garner and the Taylors (Swift and Lautner)—is all that salvages this well-intentioned heap of mediocrity. When the script isn’t eye-rollingly cheesy (“Your dad sure knows how to juggle,” quoth Patrick Dempsey’s cheated-on wife in one of the bigger groaners), it’s just plain banal. There are also far too many characters: only a few storylines manage any resonance. (The Taylors’ “arc,” for instance, is pure fluff, and Kathy Bates is wasted in only two scenes.)
 
It’s not all bad, though: Eric Dane and Topher Grace show off their rippling pectorals and Lautner continues to inspire lascivious lust. That a gay storyline is included feels like some kind of progress, but it’s an underdeveloped and neutered one; surely an actual kiss would’ve been too off-putting for Middle America.
 
None of the “provocative” story elements succeed in making this assembly-line product feel remotely original—certainly not the strident wackiness of Anne Hathaway’s phone-sex subplot, for example. During the closing credits, Roberts makes a cheeky reference to “shopping on Rodeo Drive”; it’s telling that this mildly amusing Pretty Woman in-joke is funnier than most of the movie. This is one Valentine you’d be better off returning to sender. —Justin Lockwood