Valentine's Day

I think it was an anomaly that I enjoyed this movie. Since I actually screened it on Valentine's Day, maybe I was just in the right mood for something to celebrate the holiday with. It doesn't really embody the meaning of the holiday that it snags its title from very well but it satisfies on a superficial level and that seemed to have been enough to work for me.

Most formulaic romantic comedies tend to have only a handful of interesting peaks to create the skeleton that furthers the story, with the meat, more often than not, tending to be nothing but puny fluff. But what makes Valentine's Day interesting, is that it has about a dozen storylines going on at once, so there really is no time for moments of pure fluff. Almost every scene is forced to serve a purpose or else there won't be a chance for the story to play out. It's as if 8 or 10 different films are combined into one digestible whole to spare us the gruesome filler of wannabe comedy.

That's not to say that any or all of the plots are even all that interesting. The cleverest and most charming would be the one with Anne Hathaway and Topher Grace (there are way too many well-known actors in this movie to bother citing character names... in fact the characters probably should have just been named after the actors) as a couple only 2 weeks into their relationship. The most hollow would be the one with Emma Roberts and Carter Jenkins as a teenage couple planning to give up their virginity during lunch hour on a school day. Surprise: mishaps occur and it doesn't work out so they decide to hold off. The consolation: "At least we can make out."

There are plenty of cliche moments, some slightly more deserved than others, but some of the dialogue plays out fairly decently. The smartest thing that writer Kathrine Fugate did was intertwine these stories in as many possible places to the point that I think it kept me distracted enough to avoid cynical developments. I was too busy piecing together the stories in my head. But the scenes are organized intuitively enough. Quite often I found myself trying to remember what was going on in the storyline of a character related to one on display when all of a sudden, there they were in the next scene! Also, the transitions between plotlines were fairly smooth and allowed for things to progress relatively well. On an interesting note, Taylor Swift showed some promising acting chops as a ditzy high school blonde.

I'll probably never watch this movie again. There is nothing to gain from ever watching it again. None of the many stories are very well developed to sustain me another time through. But it worked well the first time. Valentine's Day seems to have been made simply to provide couples a holiday-relevant option at the movie theatre and the chance to go "Ohh, it's *insert celebrity*!" on more occasions in one sitting than ever before. But if you are seeing it post-February 14th, then do not necessarily count on a favorable experience.

Dear John

I really felt this movie desired to say something profound. Particularly as the ending didn't seem to specifically aim for a sentimental and teary-eyed moment as other films based on Nicholas Sparks books have done. Actually, I'll be more specific and call out "A Walk to Remember" for its watered down, flat, pathos-centered denouement. Even the very well handled adaptation of "The Notebook" sought to create some waterworks in its final moments, but that movie earned the right for that opportunity. But "Dear John" aims to end on a more thoughtful note about the timing of relationships in our lives and the affect of those timings. It wants to leave us pondering the "what if's" of life and how it's never too late to bring them back into play. The problem is that we aren't provided a story with enough depth to fully support these themes.

I was very thankful not to see the conventional third act that is present in movies like "The Proposal" or "A Walk to Remember" even if the rest of the movie plays out in a typical manner. The opening voiceover and montage is very effective, but any momentum you have coming off of it is killed by a rather lame inciting incident. The characters proceed to fall in love over the course of a couple weeks. Though they do have a slight argument when Savannah proposes that John's dad might have autism (why this wouldn't have been an fairly logical hypothesis to John, given his dad's behavior, I dont know), but they overcome this and begin a pen pal relationship when John goes abroad with the Army Special Forces.

9/11 happens and John decides to extend his time in the army. Consequentially, Savannah argues the decision claiming that she should have a say in the matter. But at this point these characters have only spent a couple weeks together in person so how can either really claim to have a decent stake in the other's decisions?

John reenlists and ends up spending the next 6 or 7 years in the army. All the while whatever longing these two have for each other is not truly illustrated. The movie plays out as if these are characters that have lived a chunk of their life together and are trying to hold on to it when the focus needs to be more on a longing for the potential they have for a relationship and the desire to carry out that potential. (For more on this, see "Atonement" [2007])

At one point it seems as if the script is going to perform a pleasant trick on us and demonstrate that it's really about something other than these supposedly star-crossed lovers, but then that excitement tapers off and the movie walks back into being more of what we expected it to be. I was very excited though to see that it wasn't trying to indulge me superficially during the last half hour or so. The lone tearful scene was well earned, even if not built up to its fullest.

This film didn't so much disappoint me as it did just fail to fully satisfy me. It at least wanted to be something with meaning and purpose, and that I must be thankful for because there are so many stories put into production that lack that quality.