Image rights: New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. Productions
As part of the WINOL Valentines Day specials, we reviewed the 2010 film Valentine’s Day. Head over to Absolute:Ly Magazine for more Valentine’s features.
Released to coincide with Valentine’s Day in 2010, this star studded movie’s plot depicts different types of love, with each story intertwining. Stars such as Jessica Alba, Jennifer Garner, Bradley Cooper and Anne Hathaway only scratch the service of the huge assembled cast. Look out for an appearance by country singer, turned pop star Taylor Swift making her acting debut. I use the term acting very loosely.
There is no question that this style of film making will attract a host of teenage girls (and their reluctant boyfriends) all looking for a love filled cheese-fest for the holiday of love. Similar to those awful Christmas films you see every year, expect this film to be placed at the front of every shelf, and to be played at least twice on TV every February for years to come.
But with a film filled with such a fantastic range of world renowned actors and actresses, surely this film was destined to be a well-crafted piece of film making? Unfortunately not. The problem with this style of film is that the story does not take priority. Indeed, with the amount of big names, all wanting to have significant screen time it was always going to be a stretch to create a well written film.
The main issue of the film is that there is just too much going on, before you can connect or relate to one set of characters, you’re whisked off to the next story. Of course the stories do try to intertwine in a clever way, and sometimes this works well, but it’s just too tiring for the audience.
At just over two hours, Valentine’s Day definitely over stays its welcome, substituting character development and entertaining story, with a host of rushed mini stories. There a few decent performances here, including Bradley Cooper and Aston Kutcher, although they are nothing more than faces in the crowd.
However, having said all that, the target audience for this film will most likely overlook the shortcomings in the story telling and character development. Teenage girls will love all the eye candy on show. Chances are that the tears will be flowing by the end credits, with all stories being wrapped up in a nice, unrealistic bow.
For a film with Love as its central theme, this film left me feeling cold. The romantic feeling just isn’t there. It’s not enough to simply show two human beings saying that they love each other, but without depth behind their story, how are the audience expected to really connect?
In 2011 a similar styled film named New Year’s Eve was released to coincide with, surprise surprise, New Year’s Eve. Like parody movies, it seems that it doesn’t matter how badly a film is reviewed by critics; people will still flock to the cinema and their DVD rental store to watch these types of movie. As long as they keep making money, I’m sure in the coming years we will see blockbusters such as “Mother’s Day” “Father’s Day” and maybe even “Chinese New Year”.
In conclusion, you know your film is poor when Taylor Lautner isn’t the weakest point.
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