Valentine's Day delivers
Like the previews suggest, Valentine's Day aims to be the American version of 2003's Love Actually. And like the British romantic comedy, Valentine's Day focuses on multiple, if maudlin, storylines and amasses a sizable all-star cast. While its British counterpart used Christmas as a romantic backdrop, however, Valentine's Day focuses on the magic of Feb. 14, and the result is a wonderfully charming film.The movie centers around the chaos at a Los Angeles flower shop on Valentine's Day, its busiest day of the year. Assisted by his funny sidekick Alphonso (Beverly Hills Chihuahua's George Lopez), flower shop owner Reed Bennet (Personal Effects' Ashton Kutcher) is smitten with the holiday, having just asked his girlfriend Morley (The Love Guru's Jessica Alba) to marry him. While love-drunk Reed flits around the shop, basking in thoughts of wedding bells, he fills Valentine's Day flower orders for others attempting to capitalize on the holiday.
Given his history of goofy roles, Kutcher at first seems an unlikely choice to lead this ensemble cast; Reed appears in the film's first scene and serves as the connecting point for most of the featured relationships. Still, Kutcher provides the lovable, positive glue the upbeat film demands. Throughout the course of the day, even hopeless-romantic Reed's plans undergo various modifications, and he becomes the good guy you can't help but cheer on.
Playing off Reed's initial connections, one of the flower shop's customers is Patrick Dempsey (Made of Honor), who plays Dr. Harrison Copeland. Dempsey proves himself a McNightmare (a startling departure from his role as well-intentioned "Grey's Anatomy" hunk Derek) when Reed discovers through flower orders that Copeland is cheating on his wife (Katherine LaNasa, "Big Love"). Not only is Copeland being unfaithful, he is seeing Reed's naive best friend, Julia (The Invention of Lying's Jennifer Garner) under the guise of being divorced. With her standard sweet smile intact, Garner is perfectly cast as a good-hearted schoolteacher, but "Grey's Anatomy" fans may be shocked to see Dempsey as a scumbag. Still, Dempsey plays the part of a charming philanderer effortlessly.
Following the veritable spiderweb of connections the film outlines, Valentine's Day moves along to Julia's friend Kara (Planet 51's Jessica Biel), the publicist for famous football player Sean Jackson (Marley and Me's Eric Dane). Bitter Kara is vehemently against the holiday, and she plans to celebrate the evening with plenty of booze, friends and heart piñatas, at her annual "I Hate Valentine's Day" soiree. This juxtaposition of a bitter single woman as Valentine's-hater with a tough-yet-sensitive football player who deeply values love provides an interesting twist and adds an appreciated nuance to the plot.
Anne Hathaway (Bride Wars) and Topher Grace (Spider-Man 3) serve as yet another relationship side story that is entertaining, if less than believable. Hathaway plays Liz, a girl who works as a temp by day and an adult phone entertainer by night, who falls for a timid mail clerk named Jason. Though featuring by far the cheesiest take-home lesson of the film, "love conquers all," these sequences are carried by the usually prim Hathaway's disturbingly entertaining phone conversations with her clients.
The connections get a bit tricky after this, so try to follow along: Hathaway temps for Sean's manager (Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs' Queen Latifah), who often deals with sports reporter Kelvin Moore (Law Abiding Citizen's Jamie Foxx) and his station boss (The Blind Side's Kathy Bates). On Valentine's Day, Kelvin is assigned to cover romantic human-interest stories, including the relationship of a young high school couple (Hannah Montana: The Movie's Taylor Swift and New Moon's Taylor Lautner). In her first major film role, opposite her real-life former boyfriend, Swift delightfully caricatures the sweet, if ditsy and naive, Felicia - while of course sporting a healthy twang. The ending credits of the film feature her new single, "Today Was a Fairytale," a perfect ending for the film.
Alongside Swift, both Robertses, Emma and aunt Julia, make appearances in the film; fans of Pretty Woman may also be tickled to hear Julia reference Rodeo Drive. Emma (The Winning Season) portrays teenager Grace, who asks for love advice from an elderly couple, Estelle and Edgar (Coco Chanel's Shirley MacLaine and Hector Elizondo, "Monk"). While MacLaine and Elizondo unquestionably possess the acting chops for rom-coms and stunningly portray the still-sizzling romance of an elderly couple, they awkwardly fall short when the former confesses to a long-ago affair. This awkwardness, however, is likely more a fault of the screenplay's contrived situations than of the actors themselves.
This abrupt confession is a mere blip in an otherwise captivating and heartwarming film. Perhaps the best way to applaud the film is to say that director Garry Marshall has done it again, and can add this film to his pantheon of greats, ranging from Pretty Woman to The Princess Diaries. Overall, Valentine's Day is a sweet, charming treat, one which will hopefully have the staying power of its British predecessor.
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