![\"Movie](\"https:\/\/sduptownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/valentines.jpg\" "\\"valentines\\"")
<\/a>The good news is you won\u2019t catch the clap after watching Garry Marshall\u2019s insidious strain of cinematic VD. The bad news there will be no clapping when it\u2019s over.<\/p>\nMarshall incorporates the presence (not to be confused with talent) of a dozen or so of Hollywood\u2019s most physically perfect specimens and encases them in a multi-character romantic comedy that is so ineptly devised and executed that the only laughs to be mined are unintentional. The filmmakers put more thought into the poster art than they did telling a coherent story.<\/p>\n
What can be said of a film in which Ashton Kutcher hands in the best performance? He stars as a Los Angeles florist whose bustling shop forms the film\u2019s center of activity and coincidence. The intertwining storylines play out over a 24-hour period and screenwriter Katherine Fugate is responsible for more structural damage than a colony of carpenter ants.<\/p>\n
Almost nothing, starting with the fact that Jessica Biel can\u2019t find a date, makes any sense. Fugate\u2019s haphazard plotting makes \u201cCrash\u201d look like Jean Renoir. \u201cValentine\u2019s Day\u201d is a love letter aimed at TV-addicted channel surfers grateful to pick up swatches of dialogue and exposition as they giddily flip from station to station. It\u2019s like watching \u201cThe Love Boat\u201d minus the commercials, connecting sequences and logic.<\/p>\n
After discovering that his betrothed (Jessica Alba) does a quick turnabout on her early morning agreement to be his bride, Kutcher is hit with another whammy. Jennifer Garner, his best friend and unrequited object of desire, informs him that she\u2019s heading to San Francisco to surprise her doctor boyfriend (Patrick Dempsey). The problem is, Dempsey just happened to visit the store to order flowers for both his best girl and his wife.<\/p>\n
Armed with that chunk of back-story, Garner still insists on making the trip. Dempsey\u2019s receptionist confirms the awful truth; he\u2019s in LA having a romantic dinner with his wife. Two scenes later finds Garner back in the Valley posing as a waitress to sarcastically break the news to Mrs. Dempsey. How she manages to get from one place to another in a matter of minutes is never explained.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s one thing to cast Taylors Swift and Lautner in order to attract a younger demographic. (Watching the bubbly Swift\u2019s \u201cperformance\u201d as a Valley girl made me instantly reconsider my negative feelings toward Kanye West.) Poor Shirley MacLaine. Not only is a framed photo of the pixyish Fran Kubelik (MacLaine\u2019s character in Billy Wilder\u2019s immortal \u201cThe Apartment\u201d) strategically placed within camera range, the Oscar winning actress is asked to prance around a cemetery during a screening of \u201cHot Spell,\u201d one of her best forgotten vehicles. With all the dough spent on cast salaries, there probably wasn\u2019t enough cash left over to afford the rights to \u201cThe Apartment\u201d or \u201cSome Came Running.\u201d <\/p>\n
You\u2019ll need a shot of insulin to make it through all the dog cutaways, cute cars and assorted bridging shots of Angelinos in love, but nothing is more sickening than the presence of child actor Bryce Robinson. I defy you not to laugh at the pathos laden shot of the tyke\u2019s undelivered card and flowers lying in the middle of the street covered with tire tracks. Later in the film a pi\u00f1ata comes into play and I kept hoping that the kid somehow managed to crawl inside of it.<\/p>\n
There is one legitimate laugh and a funny throwaway in-joke. Comedian Larry Miller plays a surly Southwest Airlines ticket agent who cautions, \u201cI\u2019m 52 and wearing a bright blue shirt to work. Don\u2019t make me angrier.\u201d Look carefully when Bradley Cooper scours the airport terminal for his limo driver. In the background you\u2019ll spot two guys holding signs that read \u201cUnger\u201d and \u201cMadison,\u201d the two main characters in \u201cThe Odd Couple,\u201d the TV show Marshall produced. The director can be spotted in a brief cameo as a wandering musician. Hey, if it was good enough for Hitchcock.<\/p>\n
Be warned: If this film makes money, and it will, Fugate has already penned the follow-up: \u201cNew Year\u2019s Day.\u201d If that makes money, and it will, can \u201cVeterans Day\u201d or \u201cPurim\u201d be far behind?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Director Garry Marshall massacres \u201cValentine\u2019s Day\u201d By Scott Marks SDUN Film Critic Valentine\u2019s Day (2010) Directed by Garry Marshall Written by Katherine Fugate from a story by Katherine Fugate, Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein Starring: Ashton Kutcher, Jennifer Garner, George Lopez, Hector Elizondo, Shirley MacLaine, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper, Jamie Foxx, Julia Roberts, Anne Hathaway, […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":231729,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Movie review: No valentine here","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}