{"id":14407,"date":"2013-02-14T09:39:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-14T17:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2013\/02\/14\/14407.html"},"modified":"2013-02-14T09:39:00","modified_gmt":"2013-02-14T17:39:00","slug":"review-valentines-day-the-movi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2013\/02\/14\/review-valentines-day-the-movi\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Valentine’s Day (the movie)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you're looking for an intertwining-plot-threads fun sweet romantic comedy to watch on Valentine's Day, you could do worse than Valentine's Day<\/cite>. (No spoilers here.)<\/p>\n

(If you'd rather avoid romancey stuff today, then you don't want to see this movie, and you may want to skip this review.)<\/p>\n

It's a formula established by Love Actually<\/cite>: Pick a significant holiday and a major British or American city; write roughly ten short funny sweet-or-bittersweet romance stories (some with some substance, others very brief and fluffy) set on or around that holiday and in or around that city; have some of the characters in them overlap (friends, family, co-workers); cast about twenty well-known actors (mostly white), including a few major stars; cut back and forth among the stories; sell to an admiring public.<\/p>\n

I love Love Actually<\/cite> despite some politically problematic bits (notably all the fat jokes). In late 2011, I saw New Year's Eve<\/cite>, which I enjoyed but which seemed to me to be clearly constructed along the same lines; after watching that, I wrote: “What's next? Presidents' Day?” and someone said “Well, there was another one, about Valentine's Day.” Which recently finally made it to the top of my Netflix queue, and I figured the night before V-Day was as good a time as any to watch it.<\/p>\n

It turns out, though I didn't know this until after watching it, that Valentine's Day<\/cite> was written and directed by the same people as New Year's Eve<\/cite>, and released the previous year. Now I'm hoping they'll give the same treatment to all the holidays. Halloween already has a movie, and I suppose Veteran's Day and Memorial Day might be too somber for a romantic comedy, but I look forward to the movies Thanksgiving<\/cite>, Labor Day<\/cite>, St. Patrick's Day<\/cite>, Tax Day<\/cite>, and Stephen Foster Memorial Day<\/cite>.<\/p>\n

Anyway. The movie at hand (Valentine's Day<\/cite>, in case you've lost track in all the digressions) is pretty much what you would expect if you've seen either of the other two. It's not as good as Love Actually<\/cite> (but it has about 100% fewer malicious fat jokes), and it's about as good as New Year's Eve<\/cite>. Most of the storylines are extremely predictable, though one was a delightful surprise. The cast is good, as usual for these things. The first half of the movie was fine but didn't actually make me laugh, but I laughed more and more as things progressed; I really liked the second half quite a bit. The romances are fluffy but sweet—there's very little of the bittersweet that made some parts of Love Actually<\/cite> feel a little more substantial and sad.<\/p>\n

Anne Hathaway is by far my favorite actor in this; she's fun and charming as someone who's moonlighting as a phone-sex worker. Ashton Kutcher (who I've liked in three movies now, though I just realized I've been confusing him with Justin Timberlake) and Jennifer Garner do a good job in the central-spine storyline that's sort of the core of the movie. George Lopez as the token Latino<\/strike> best friend starts out looking like a stereotype but gets a little more interesting later.<\/p>\n

Bradley Cooper is hot as always, and I like the interactions between him and Julia Roberts (who's cast, unusually, as a military captain on leave) on an airplane. Taylor Swift and Taylor Lautner are also hot, as a somewhat airheaded high-school couple. Eric Dane is also<\/em> hot as a football player. Jessica Biel is good as his publicist who's hosting an anti-V-Day party.<\/p>\n

Queen Latifah in a relatively minor role as the token black woman<\/strike> football player's agent is fun. Jamie Foxx in a major role as a token black man<\/strike> sportscaster is fine but has one really unfortunate line (but also a couple of very funny lines), and I feel like his storyline is one of the three or so that get a bit shortchanged and resolve a little too easily. Kathy Bates, sadly, has little more than a two-part cameo in the TV studio.<\/p>\n

Shirley MacLaine and Hector Elizondo are good as the old married couple. Bryce Robinson is cute as the little white boy in love, but nowhere near as adorable as (and a too-obvious copy of) Sam (the Thomas Sangster character) from Love Actually<\/cite>.<\/p>\n

Overall I'd say Valentine's Day<\/cite> is worth seeing for people who like this sort of thing. People who don't like this sort of thing should probably stay far away from it, especially today.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’re looking for an intertwining-plot-threads fun sweet romantic comedy to watch on Valentine’s Day, you could do worse than…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","category-reviews"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}