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.