Valentine's Day

Plot synopsis:
It's Valentine's Day in Los Angeles, florist Reed Bennett (Ashton Kutcher) proposes to his girlfriend Morley (Jessica Alba) who accepts, much to the surprise of Reeds closest friends Alphonso (George Lopez) and Julia Fitzpatrick (Jennifer Garner). Morley changes her mind and leaves Reed later in the day. Alphonso tells Reed he and Julia knew it would never work out between him and Morley, and Reed wishes they had told him. On an airplane to Los Angeles, Kate Hazeltine (Julia Roberts), a captain in the U.S. Army on a one-day leave, befriends newly single Holden Bristow (Bradley Cooper). Kate and Holden chat, play a backgammon, and tell jokes. When the plane lands, and Kate has to wait hours for the taxi, Holden offers his limousine, which Kate accepts, as she only has one day to spend with her family before she has to go back to the army.Julia, an elementary school teacher has fallen in love with Dr. Harrison Copeland (Patrick Dempsey), but does not know that he is married to his wife Pamela (Katherine LaNasa). Reed finds out when Harrison orders flowers for his wife and girlfriend, Julia (Jennifer Garner). Harrison tells her that he needs to go to San Francisco for a business trip. Wanting to surprise him and following Reed's advice from earlier on in the day, Julia buys a plane ticket to San Francisco. Reed quickly comes to the airport and warns Julia, and she refuses to believe it and gets on the plane. She goes to the hospital where he said he would be, and inquires after him. The nurses at the counter reveal to her that he is married and tell her the name of the restaurant where he and his wife will be dining that evening. As she teaches the owner's son, the owner allows her to dress as a waitress. Julia makes a scene at the restaurant, and gives back the toy Harrison gave her that morning. Harrison's wife, Pamela, becomes suspicious when Julia makes a comment referring to Harrison's ability to juggle, and Harrison is seen eating pizza alone in a condo later on that evening, implying that Pamela has left him right after Julia's scene. One of Julia's students, Edison (Bryce Robinson), orders flowers from Reed, to be sent to his teacher. There is a delay in the delivery of flowers, but Edison insists that Reed delivers the flowers the same day. They are for Julia; however, she suggests to Edison to give the flowers to a lonely girl in the class who also has a crush on him, which he does.Edison's babysitter Grace (Emma Roberts) is planning to lose her virginity with her boyfriend Alex (Carter Jenkins). The planned encounter goes awry when Grace's mom discovers a naked Alex in Grace's room rehearsing a song he wrote for Grace on his guitar. Meanwhile Edison's grandparents, Edgar (Hector Elizondo) and Estelle (Shirley MacLaine) are facing the troubles of a long marriage. Grace explains to them that she wants to have sex with Alex, and says, "It's not like I am going to sleep with one person for the rest of my life." This upsets Estelle and leads to her telling Edgar about an affair she had with one of his business partners. The affair was while he was away, and it didn't last long. Although she is deeply sorry for what she did, Edgar is deeply upset. Graces high-school friends, Willy (Taylor Lautner) and Felicia (Taylor Swift), are experiencing the freshness of new love, and have agreed to wait to have sex. On Valentine's Day, Willy gives Felicia a large white bear that she carries around with her everywhere and Felicia gets him a gray running t-shirt (which was his) and ironed the number 13 on the back for "good luck". They are interviewed on the news and advertise their love and support for each other.Sean Jackson (Eric Dane), a closeted gay professional football player, is contemplating the end of his career together with his publicist Kara (Jessica Biel) and his agent Paula (Queen Latifah). Kara, a close friend of Julia's, is organizing her annual I Hate Valentines Day party, but is becoming interested in sports reporter Kelvin Moore (Jamie Foxx) who has been sent out by his producer Susan (Kathy Bates) to cover Valentines Day because of a lack of sports news, and they share their mutual hatred of Valentine's Day. Paula has hired a new receptionist named Liz (Anne Hathaway) who has started dating mailroom clerk Jason (Topher Grace). Jason is first shocked when Liz turns out to be moonlighting as a phone sex operator. Liz explains that she is only doing this because she has a $100,000 student loan to pay off, has no health insurance, and is completely broke. Jason decides that her job is too much for him to handle, but eventually comes back to the relationship after seeing Edgar forgive his wife, Estelle.Sean comes out on national television, and Holden (who is Sean's lover) goes back to him. Kate goes home to greet her son Edison. Willy drops Felicia off at home after a date and they kiss goodnight. Kelvin and Kara hang out at Kelvin's news station where they later kiss, Alfonso dines with his wife, Grace and Alex agree to wait to have sex, Edgar and Estelle retell each other their marriage vows and kiss in the theater, Jason goes back to Liz and they decide to keep a bond together but to also "keep it simple", Morley is shown walking her Border collie while trying to call Reed and the movie closes with Julia and Reed beginning a relationship.

Tags: comedy, entertaining, romantic

Review:
If you loved 'Love Actually' do NOT see Valentine's Day. All star cast, great premise and timely release unfortunately do not make up for poor script, tacky comedy and a general go nowhere film.
This time, I have taken my single self to see Valentine's Day, to see if it can measure up to last year's star-sprinkled surprise-surprise hit comedy He's Just Not That into You. I wanted to see that if despite without the lovey-dovey person by my side (which has been a vacant position for a while) the movie can still deliver, entertain, and touch the soul.Also, I wanted to see if people working at the theater would dedicate a bit of time from their ordinary day to point out that it's strange that I am watching a movie called Valentine's Day by myself.
After her laughter subdued, she pointed me to theater #1.Valentine's Day works in the tradition of last year's February romantic success story, and Love Actually, a British dramatic rom-com that jump-started the technique of applying multiple love stories in a film.
Poor Garry Marshall can only do so much, even though his best days (Pretty Woman, Happy Days) are long gone.The limited time for acting also diminished the performances of almost every single star in the movie.
NOw top it off with every romantic comedy cliché in the book, clone it a few times and top it off again.The end result is worse than it sounds.It physically pains me to hear that people came out of this movie having enjoyed it .
Unfortunately for the world and for the sake of film, it WILL snare that audience and most will come out liking it.The movie had a few (only a few) nice tender moments and plot twists but the amount of bad overshadows this by a long shot.A god-awful mess.
This is one of the worst films I have ever seen, which is quite an achievement for a film with so many well-known actors.I think I agree with many people that the film is very boring, too long, too predictable and that the humor is rather flat and not very original.However, many people seem to think that this is a romantic comedy, and while this is probably really the genre for which this film is classified, there is very little about love and romance in this film.
After watching the online trailers, reading all about the buzz of the film with it's commanding list of quality actors, I was quite keen to watch Garry Marshall's take on Valentines Day.I had hoped for a crossed storyline set up similar to 'Love Actually' but instead sat through a fractured mess of wasted talent without even the slight chance of cheering on any particular character.
Except for the teen-aged love stories which are absent in LA and might as well have been absent here too - blatantly obvious they are only there to further Taylor Swift's singing career (since she can't act and her song is in it).This film has too many characters and spends too little time on most of the relationships for them to even matter in the scheme of things.In addition to this the producers of this film were unoriginal when naming characters and the plots for said characters: A male chasing after a female in the clichéd airport scene where he hopes to not regret telling her something (also done in LA).
Enter Valentine's Day. Well, I watched the whole 100 (or so) minutes but I must confess that I haven't seen such a bad movie in a long while.
This is utter crap!The story is about a whole bunch of ordinary people (played by big Hollywood celebrities) who are trying to cope with love on Valentine's Day. Most of the story lines are pretty predictable and I think Ashton Kutcher gets most of the screen time.
I went into this movie thinking it was just a juggernaut of a cast brought together purely to throw together a film to capitalize on V-day but i ate my words after watching it.The movie is lovey-dubby to say the least but keeps track of each story arch very well and the twists that weave them all together are a lot better than you'd expect.
The ensemble cast really shines in this light romantic movie, especially Ashton Kutcher, whose been absent from the limelight for a bit, makes a pleasant return as the florist who is as much of romantic as they come, and George Lopez is also great in his role of the family man with all the right views on love.This review would go on forever if I broke down the whole cast but they all play their parts very well and portray the many types of love you see, young love, mature love, new relationships, and the also the type of love for someone you didn't realize you had.
It must have looked such a great idea when pitched to the studio: a huge cast of stars, multiple story lines with cross connections, different takes on romance, lots of songs about love, and - even better than the Anglo film they would claim - Los Angeles (instead of London) and Valentine's Day (instead of Christmas).But it just doesn't work and only underlines how subtle and clever was the original version.
There are just too many relationships going on with too much confusion in the tales and, above all, a really weak and saccharine script from Katherine Fugate.The best performance comes from Anne Hathaway but, if you just want to spot the stars, there's plenty on show including Ashton Kutcher and Jamie Foxx, Julia Roberts and Jennifer Gardner, Hector Elizondo and Shirley MacLaine.
Valentine's Day is a romantic comedy about a bunch of star actors with little plot lines and stories to make the movie interesting.
The movie picked up when the conflicts happened towards the second half of the film, but in all the movie was actually boring and hard to watch at many scenes and moments.The limited time for acting also diminished the performances of almost every single star in the movie.
I felt that the acting wasn't than great, it could have been better and many of the stories were unrealistic and very weak Overall, the problem with Valentine's Day is very simple: we've seen it before and after 2009 being such a good year for romantic comedies, the expectations are higher.
Foxx seems way too charming to be such an unlikeable character, as publicist Kara (Jessica Biel) slowly falls for him, but we're not really given enough time as we cut to florist Reed (Ashton Kutcher) a hopeless romantic who has fallen for Morley (Jessica Alba), and Julia (Jennifer Garner) in a 30-something love triangle.
Emma Roberts and Carter Jenkins were fine, and i'd probably have to say the same about the Taylors (no need to "last name" them)but the lines were really cheesy and dumb, and i would love to believe that's only due to their characters and not due to self stupidity, cause i'm 17 years old and i bet you i've never talked like that, folks.
Now putting that aside (and the fact that some things are quite predictable on everyone of this films)I feel myself almost obligated to point out that some of the endings of this laced stories were quite moving because of being so unexpected and unimaginable, and that, i believe, had given a total new meaning to this movie.
OK, so it's really cheesy but that's what you would expect from a film called Valentine's Day. There are a lot of story lines going on in this film so none of them go in to much detail which I didn't mind really because if there's a storyline or characters that you don't like, at least the film doesn't stay in one place for too long!
I just watched this romantic comedy that was released two days before the actual holiday and managed to be mostly charmed by the whole thing despite this movie being no great shakes.
Whoever thought it would be funny to include airport limo drivers holding placards seeking "Unger" and "Madison" was right.I expect those people who worry about me because of my contempt for films like "Titanic" and "The Notebook", will continue to pray for me, but I can't recommend "Valentine's Day" to anyone who genuinely appreciates a good love story, or who also enjoys a clever comedy..
The individual plots are simplistic and although the threads connecting them are supposed to lead to eventual surprises it often confuses the viewer as to how the characters know each other as no clear explanation is given.Some of the stories and characters are completely extraneous, such as Taylor Lautner and his perpetually on-display front teeth (shut your mouth dude, it's easy to do) and the little Indian girl who seems to be unnaturally shoehorned into the film after the success of Slumdog Millionaire.There's no sense of humor to Valentine's Day. The cast seem to be under the impression that any quirky or good-natured line they have is a thigh-slapper but I just found it cringe-inducing.
And I also don't understand why I'm not allowed to enjoy both 'Love Actually' and 'Valentine's Day'.I suggest renting this movie and judging for yourself.
The two Taylor's, Lautner and Swift, play their love-struck high school couple with a cheerful amount of tongue-in-cheek; Kutcher proves his charisma can go a long way as a heartbroken florist; and Cooper and Roberts (Julia, that is) are intriguing as plane passengers who don't know each other.
The two Taylor's, Lautner and Swift, play their love-struck high school couple with a cheerful amount of tongue-in-cheek; Kutcher proves his charisma can go a long way as a heartbroken florist; and Cooper and Roberts (Julia, that is) are intriguing as plane passengers who don't know each other.
The clichés in this film are unbelievably frequent and it often feels unbearable at points but the (dare I say it?) emotive ending makes the effort of watching just worth it.Valentine's Day is basically giving Love Actually the finger by making the cast bigger, prettier and well that's about it.
Set on February 14, Valentine's Day follows a number of LA-area couples – Julia (Jennifer Garner), Dr. Harrison (Patrick Dempsey); Kara (Jessica Biel), Kelvin (Jamie Foxx); Reed (Ashton Kutcher), Morley (Jessica Alba); Liz (Anne Hathaway) Jason (Topher Grace); Kate (Julia Roberts), Holden (Bradley Cooper); and Edgar (Hector Elizondo), Estelle (Shirley MacLaine) – as they cope with their relationship woes.An overabundant anthology, Valentine's Day is spread waffer thin, donating equal time to lesser vignettes (Taylor Lautner, Taylor Swift) that distract from the few intriguing ones (Eric Dane, Queen Latifah).
There are literally a dozen or so plot lines in the mix here and all of them not very good and some actors are literally wasted such as Kathy Bates who appears in two scenes.Jamie Foxx is a second tier sports commentator trying to find that big story rather than care for human interest stories who falls for Jessica Biel, a publicist for an over the hill football star whose agent is Queen Latifah.Ashton Kutcher is a romantic florist on the busiest day of the year but his fiancée Jessica Alba is having cold feet and he realises the right woman for him could be his best friend Jennifer Garner a school teacher who is having a fling with a doctor who she later realises is married.Shirley MacLaine is a 1950s starlet married for 50 years to Hector Elizondo but confesses to him of a past betrayal.
They seem to get on well and flirt a little but who does Cooper really care for?Anne Hathaway has got a new job working for Queen Latifah but she moonlights as a phone sex operator and just started a relationship with Topher Grace.There are also plot lines featuring Taylor Swift, Taylor Lautner and Emma Roberts which is as tedious as Hathaway talking sexy every five minutes when the phone goes off wherever she is at work, at home or in a restaurant.I liked the young kid bothering Kutcher for the delivery of his roses but you can guess who he really had a crush on.
Every story in this would have been better if they were there own movie, Ashton Kutcher and Jessica Biel's story could have been good as a solo movie and Jamie Foxx's story definitely could have made for an original romantic comedy, but when we put all these stories together we never get to see as much as we could with any, all the characters are very underdeveloped, we forget about most of them when they aren't shown for a while, and other stories literally go nowhere, the characters are in the same position that they were at the start of the film (such as Taylor Swift and Taylor Lautner's parts), which is completely pointless.
I did not have a good time watching this movie, and unless you love romantic comedies no matter what, I would not recommend Valentine's Day. The lives of several couples and singles collide when they make up and break up during Valentine's Day. Best Performance: Hector Elizondo Worst Performance: Jessica Alba.
It's delightfully naughty at times, but without going overboard, and it has enough heart, creativity, and life for ten movies of it's kind.It also crossed my mind that- though the message of the film is very simple, being simply a photograph of love- the arrangement of characters and the actually believable way that they are all connected is a fun juggle, and perhaps too much for the incoherent mind.
Relationships get a lot more complicated, but what brings us together is too simple for words, and can only be described with repeated viewings from every angle, a'la this film: THE Valentine's Day movie, case closed.So like it or not, it was born a huge film, and cannot be stopped- it was packed at every showing the night I saw it- real people love it, and it's here to stay.
Valentine's Day. Valentines Day, as we all know, is a story about people who are trying to fall in love and at the same time, the stores are woven together.I went into this movie really expecting it to be a flop.
Marshall had earned the respect of his fellow filmmakers and audiences with cute, poignant films such as "Pretty Woman", "Runaway Bride" and "The Princess Diaries", but his latest "Valentine's Day" will have people worldwide fleeing the Cineplexes in terror from now on.The movie features no less than twenty-one famous actors and actresses acting badly, portraying (according to them) a mosaic of interconnected Los Angeles couples during Valentine's Day. Spare me the emotional exhaustion of describing them all, and don't even think I remember a single one of the characters' names (it isn't even worth the effort to look them up in IMDb.com).
Don't worry if it doesn't, cause it's just as unimportant as the film.Many people have gone wild comparing and contrasting this abysmal movie with Richard Curtis' "Love Actually" (which is another romantic film about couples), but they ALL agree in the fact that Curtis' film is actually poignant, has an excellent characterization, involves us in the lives of each of the couples and reaches over to audiences...while "Valentine's Day" repels us, feels too long, is boring, and makes us wonder what the heck so many good actors and actresses where thinking when they accepted the part.
Then he called some of his long-time actors such as Julia Roberts, Hector Elizondo and Anne Hathaway and convinced them to act in it; then he got the rest of the famous actors convincing them that a star-studded romantic mosaic would hit the pot of gold with audiences; he added Taylor Swift, who would win over every tween in the world; and finally he decided to screen it on Valentine's Day to attract the love-struck couples with big names and a romantic plot.
I can't give a film zero stars, so I'll justify the half-star I gave "Valentine's Day" with the facts that a) Julia Roberts doesn't demean herself much in the only mediocre role there is, b) Anne Hathaway has an amusing Russian accent when talking to one of her phone sex clients, and c) Taylor Swift's song "Today was a Fairytale", which was written exclusively for the movie, wasn't half bad.Rating: Half a star out of 4..
i don't know why so many people are hating on this movie, its great, good story line, heaps of A listers, amazing acting, romantic, comedy, the works.
The funny part is that Bryce Robinson is a child actor, that itself so impressed me I found myself smiling every time he was on the screen.The movie featured a large ensemble cast that included Jessica Alba, Kathy Bates, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper, Eric Dane, Patrick Dempsey, Hector Elizondo, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Topher Grace, Anne Hathaway, Ashton Kutcher, Queen Latifah, Taylor Lautner, George Lopez, Shirley MacLaine, Emma Roberts, Julia Roberts and Taylor Swift.The movie is simple and the plot is not overly complex just the element of surprise here and there, and then in some other tales the whole surprise does not exist as the tale looked too familiar to even matter, but all in all I loved many of the tales.The movie plot focuses on what is happening in the lives of many of the above listed actors on Valentine's Day, some of them are facing lack of love, others are discovering love and there is some heartbreak.The movie was received with negative reviews, but in the teen choice award it was voted best romantic film.
The add the likes of Jessica Alba, Kathy Bates, Jessica Biel, Kara Monahan, Bradley Cooper, Eric Dane, Patrick Dempsey, Hector Elizondo, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Topher Grace, Anne Hathaway, Ashton Kutcher, Queen Latifah, Taylor Lautner, George Lopez, Shirley MacLaine, Emma Roberts, and Julia Roberts - among many other more minor actors and voila!