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Valentine's Day
herine Bray
UK cinema audiences may feel a slight sense of deja vu upon encountering Valentine's Day. An ensemble of familiar faces, each participating in their own vignettes about the consequences of cupid's bow, a poster from which they twinkle cheerily at the unwary consumer, offering a come-on confection of movie magic and sentimental slush... Yup, Valentine's Day is essentially a US take on Richard Curtis' Love Actually format. This being America, the actors are glossier, the teeth are whiter, and the commercial potential of such a venture is unabashedly maximised by a title that ties in with its release date holiday. In a way, you've got to hand it to them. It's so completely shameless about its ambitions as a holiday money spinner; nobody is pretending this is high art. From the star's point of view it's a winner too - there's so many of them, their individual shooting schedules must have been a breeze. The segmented nature of their stories, neatly partitioned into small groups and individual couples, helps avoid what would normally be a scheduling nightmare involved in pinning down all these names at the same time. It's not a movie, it's a parade of bit parts for big names.
The main reason that you should avoid Valentine's Day is that if you help make this product a hit, you can look forward to similar ensembles twinkling glossily through the multiplex around every major holiday. This is not movie-making, it's a living breathing Hollywood hotlist garnished with a couple of classy names to give it the appearance of a proper film. It isn't, it's an extended trailer.
In Love, Actually, while the overall effect was naff and cloying, certain characters stood out. On the comic side, Bill Nighy came up trumps, while Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman's failing marriage managed to be as affecting as it could given the limited screen time. In Valentine's Day there are so many couples it's impossible to even remember them all, but the pair emerging with vague credit are Shirley MacLaine and Hector Elizondo as an old married couple. Even though, inevitably, they've only been thrown into the mix (alongside Kathy Bates) to make sure the movie has the requisite cross-generational appeal for an older demographic, while studly Taylor Lautner baits the hook for the Twilight crowd.
Funnily enough, the trailer showcases its range of couples proudly - with the exception of a gay storyline between Bradley Cooper and Eric Dane, which the film's marketing keeps very quiet about. This is cynical stuff and not worthy of your time, on Valentine's or any other day.
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