Valentine's Day (2010) Patrick Dempsey, Hector Elizondo, Topher Grace, Jessica Alba, Kathy Bates, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper, Eric Dane, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Anne Hathaway, Ashton Kutcher, Queen Latifah, Taylor Lautner, George Lopez Movie Review

Valentine's Day (2010)   3/53/53/53/53/5


Valentine's Day (2010)

Love Again

Valentine's Day is here and not only is it a busy day for florist Reed Bennett (Ashton Kutcher) but he has proposed to his girlfriend. Meanwhile his best friend Julia (Jennifer Garner) is about to fly off to surprise her doctor boyfriend. And Julia's best friend, sport's agent Kara (Jessica Biel), is about to host her annual I hate Valentine's Day dinner, a feeling which sports reporter Kelvin (Jamie Foxx) agrees with especially when he is asked to do some Valentine's Day reporting. Meanwhile Jason (Topher Grace) is faced with a decision over new girlfriend Liz (Anne Hathaway) which sees him sharing a drink with Edgar (Hector Elizondo) who has been rocked by a revelation from his wife Estelle (Shirley MacLaine). Even their young grandson is dealing with romantic issues as is his baby sitter Grace (Emma Roberts) who has decided to lose her virginity to boyfriend Alex (Carter Jenkins) while there school friends Willy (Taylor Lautner) and Felicia (Taylor Swift) are giddy with love.

I will stop there as there are more characters in "Valentine's Day" but to mention them would possibly cause me to spoil some of what goes on in this movie from director Garry Marshall. Now I could give you a very short review because "Valentine's Day" is pretty much an American version of "Love Actually" which instead is set on February 14th. As such several of these characters end up connecting and with each of them dealing with love we get to see many different aspects of what love is from loving the bad in someone as well as the good to how some times who you think you love ends up not being the one. And to be honest for the most it is entertaining with plenty of fun characters and a couple of twists which in truth when you do the sums are not that surprising.

But what worked so well about "Valentine's Day" is that whilst there were a couple of characters who were a bit superfluous the rest of them all had a nice story and were nicely acted. Basically director Garry Marshall did a great job of juggling all the actors, characters and story threads so all the main ones were interesting and linked in an entertaining way. More significantly is that whilst very much in the same vein as "Love Actually" it doesn't feel too much like a poor knock off and stands on its own feet.

What this all boils down to is that "Valentine's Day" is simply an American take on "Love Actually" and it is a good movie. But whilst familiar in the way characters end up connecting whilst we get the romantic trials and tribulations it doesn't feel like it is too much of a copy.


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