Valentine's Day

Tagline: A love story. More or less.

So who didn’t want to see this star-studded movie? I had wanted to see it in the theater but after hearing just terrible things, I was not as motivated but did finally gather up the motivation and saw the movie. Here’s a list of the main headliners: Ashton Kutcher, Jessica Alba, Jennifer Garner, Patrick Dempsey, Jamie Foxx, Jessica Biel, Taylor Swift, Taylor Lautner, Shirley McLane, Hector Elizondo, Queen Latifah, Anne Hathaway, Topher Grace, Eric Dane, George Lopez, Kathy Bates, Bradley Cooper, and Julia Roberts. And this is why most of America wanted to see this movie.







The movie follows the make-ups and break-ups of several different couples over the course of one Valentine’s Day and all the stories intertwine in some way or another. The plot loosely follows the story of Ashton Kutcher, Jessica Alba, Jennifer Garner, and Patrick Dempsey’s characters or at least give us an opening and closure to the movie. We also find a young high school couple, an old married couple, a newly dating young professional couple, and a determined bachelorette who throws a yearly ‘I hate Valentines’ party.






The plot follows nicely even with the segmented storyline and most of the characters get equal time in the movie. The connectedness of the characters is believable but implausible. The plot was light, heart-warming, and entertaining. It was not however a deep look into the dynamics of a relationship, i.e Love Actually. This was more of a optimistic He’s Just Not That Into You. I would say that most of the characters were fun and had a place in the movie. A few of the characters were a little bit quirky but pretty much just normal clichéd characters. The plot was basically about the different things you can do on Valentines Day and how different people embrace the day.






The movie flowed well between the different arches and was easy to follow. With a movie like this, it would be very hard to lose the audience in confusion and not space out the arches well enough so the editing was well thought out and sequenced nicely. The filming was high quality and on par with this type of movie since it was character-driven.






The performances were nicely done. I would say that the shining performance was from Anne Hathaway who really did great with her character, which was probably the most fun character in the movie. Everyone else was pretty much a normal person in the movie. Taylor Swift makes her acting debut and did an okay job. At first it looked like a performance I saw when she did Saturday Night Live, but towards the end it got a little better. She just seemed a little too eager to play the part but again she’s a singer and not an actress. Jessica Biels’ character felt the most faked and especially her interactions with Jamie Foxx’ character. I really enjoyed Bradley Cooper and Julia Roberts in the movie, although they were pretty much secluded from the rest.






Overall, it was a cute and entertaining movie despite what I had heard going into this. I think knowing from the beginning that this wasn’t going to be anywhere close to Love Actually, helped. Although this was one of those movies that made you feel lonely watching it alone late at night, just for a couple of minutes. I really think these are the best kinds of movies for these actors to do since you really can’t blame one person for a flop, they get paid well, and the parts are super easy. I would recommend this movie to couples and anyone who wants to watch a cute lovey-dovey movie.