[postlink]https://fantasymoviereview.blogspot.com/2010/02/httpwww_18.html[/postlink]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSS-QPdiiiYendofvid
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Valentine's Day (PG-13) Warner Bros. (120 min.)
Directed by Garry Marshall. With Julia Roberts, Anne Hathaway, Jennifer
Garner, Bradley Cooper, Ashton Kutcher. Now playing in New Jersey.
review: One and a half stars
Rating note: The film contains sexual situations and strong language.
Movie Review: These are the jokes, folks.
Both of them.
Garry Marshall's "Valentine's Day" doesn't skimp on the stars, though. A supersized ensemble features just about everybody who ever made a Marshall movie, or maybe watched one on TV.
Julia Roberts is the big "get" here, but there's also Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Garner, Jamie Foxx, Shirley MacLaine, the Jessicas Biel and Alba and the doctors McDreamy and McSteamy.
That's not a cast, it's a Zip code.
Unfortunately, this overstuffed movie doesn't take time to really focus on any of them. It's a kind of "He's Just Not That Into You and You, and You, and Especially Not You," with plot twists piling up like six-car collisions.
Hathaway is a struggling actress who moonlights as a phone-sex worker. Garner is a schoolteacher getting two-timed (and oblivious to best friend Ashton Kutcher). Roberts is on a plane. Foxx is on TV.
The movie is on life-support.
Marshall's credits go back to the early '60s; before he went into the movies he was responsible for some of the funniest moments on "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and "The Odd Couple." But this film feels more like one of his episodes for "Love, American Style."
Some of the performers are winning. Biel, who has a big hungry grin and no fears about physical comedy, continues to outshine her material.
Garner still radiates tomboy charm, and Hathaway looks for the real moment in every scene.
And, yes, I guess there's a certain gossip value now to seeing Taylor Swift and Lautner - then still a couple - on screen together. And some bad and accidental topicality, in playing an airport security breach for laughs.
But that's it. Tiny, tangerine Alba seems interested only in beating Rosario Dawson's record for most bad movies in a career. Swift's film debut is more torturously abrasive than her Grammy performance.
And Kutcher? Please. Stop tweeting for a second and comb the hair out of your eyes, would you? You're 32 already, man, c'mon.
Give the film some credit for at least having a gay and an interracial romance in the mix; take away a bit of that for its easy gags about "funny" accents. (And give yourself 10 points if you remembered Marshall started his showbiz career writing jokes for Bill Dana's made-up Latino character, "Jose Jimenez").
Not that there's any real harm in "Valentine's Day." In fact, there's nothing remotely real in it at all, and certainly no surprise. (If you don't see the "twist" coming in the Julia Roberts/Bradley Cooper seatmates-on-a-plane story, you've already fallen asleep). And the jokes? At a $10 ticket price, they average out to $5 a piece.
The film will probably make millions anyway, based on that cast. (A follow-up film has already been announced.) And the release date doesn't hurt either. I know plenty of nice people who are desperate to see a good romantic comedy this weekend.
And they still will be, even after they see "Valentine's Day."
[starttext]
Valentine's Day (PG-13) Warner Bros. (120 min.)
Directed by Garry Marshall. With Julia Roberts, Anne Hathaway, Jennifer
Garner, Bradley Cooper, Ashton Kutcher. Now playing in New Jersey.
review: One and a half stars
Rating note: The film contains sexual situations and strong language.
Movie Review: These are the jokes, folks.
Both of them.
Garry Marshall's "Valentine's Day" doesn't skimp on the stars, though. A supersized ensemble features just about everybody who ever made a Marshall movie, or maybe watched one on TV.
Julia Roberts is the big "get" here, but there's also Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Garner, Jamie Foxx, Shirley MacLaine, the Jessicas Biel and Alba and the doctors McDreamy and McSteamy.
That's not a cast, it's a Zip code.
Unfortunately, this overstuffed movie doesn't take time to really focus on any of them. It's a kind of "He's Just Not That Into You and You, and You, and Especially Not You," with plot twists piling up like six-car collisions.
Hathaway is a struggling actress who moonlights as a phone-sex worker. Garner is a schoolteacher getting two-timed (and oblivious to best friend Ashton Kutcher). Roberts is on a plane. Foxx is on TV.
The movie is on life-support.
Marshall's credits go back to the early '60s; before he went into the movies he was responsible for some of the funniest moments on "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and "The Odd Couple." But this film feels more like one of his episodes for "Love, American Style."
Some of the performers are winning. Biel, who has a big hungry grin and no fears about physical comedy, continues to outshine her material.
Garner still radiates tomboy charm, and Hathaway looks for the real moment in every scene.
And, yes, I guess there's a certain gossip value now to seeing Taylor Swift and Lautner - then still a couple - on screen together. And some bad and accidental topicality, in playing an airport security breach for laughs.
But that's it. Tiny, tangerine Alba seems interested only in beating Rosario Dawson's record for most bad movies in a career. Swift's film debut is more torturously abrasive than her Grammy performance.
And Kutcher? Please. Stop tweeting for a second and comb the hair out of your eyes, would you? You're 32 already, man, c'mon.
Give the film some credit for at least having a gay and an interracial romance in the mix; take away a bit of that for its easy gags about "funny" accents. (And give yourself 10 points if you remembered Marshall started his showbiz career writing jokes for Bill Dana's made-up Latino character, "Jose Jimenez").
Not that there's any real harm in "Valentine's Day." In fact, there's nothing remotely real in it at all, and certainly no surprise. (If you don't see the "twist" coming in the Julia Roberts/Bradley Cooper seatmates-on-a-plane story, you've already fallen asleep). And the jokes? At a $10 ticket price, they average out to $5 a piece.
The film will probably make millions anyway, based on that cast. (A follow-up film has already been announced.) And the release date doesn't hurt either. I know plenty of nice people who are desperate to see a good romantic comedy this weekend.
And they still will be, even after they see "Valentine's Day."
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