Valentine's Day
What?
Never before has so much talent been put to such little use. Valentines Day is a turgid, soul destroying exercise in commerciality designed exclusively to fill cinema screens across the world on one specific day of the year. On the basis of this I firmly believe that the majority of people who suffered through this film on the ultimate date night of the year would rather have been sat at home wishing they hadn’t bothered with romance and had, instead, become an old agoraphobic curmudgeon obsessed with cats and how they ‘don’t make em like they used to no more’.
I would have rather sat and watched a two hour art installation that simply featured a revolving slideshow of the cheques that these actors picked up for their shameful contribution to the proud legacy of the quality rom-com. In attempting to emulate a day in the life scenario (Think of this as ‘Shit Cuts’ to Altman’s peerless ‘Short Cuts’) the director, Garry Marshall, simply pings us from one inconsequentiality to another. By the end of watching this film my eyes had rolled back in my head at the sheer brainless, ambitionless, money grabbing, wholly cynical nature of this cinematic aberration. If this is what Valentines Day looks like, slip some me some rohypnol and wake me up when the violation is over.
Optics:
The film looks fine, with a bright and breezy sheen that has impact in high definition.
Sonics:
The audio is a fine representation of the source material despite being neither particularly engaging nor dynamic. It does the job as well as you would hope for.
Extras:
The disc is festooned with extras. You would think that a film this bad probably wouldn’t have may deleted scenes but, you’ll be horrified to know, they actually cut out quite a lot of stuff that was even worse, oh the horror. There’s also a commentary track by Garry Marshall. I listened to a bit of it but I found it hard to maintain my policy of respecting my elders as he bumbled through another star sucking anecdote about the relative measures of Ashton Kutcher (in my mind a talentless charisma void) talent.
Well?
To say that this film wasn’t ‘my cup of tea’ would be an understatement. To say that it was a hollow, vacuous, ambition free, assault on the art of cinema would probably be a fairer representation of my thoughts. However, if you are a cinematic sadist, this may well be the film for you.
Chris Hacking
Never before has so much talent been put to such little use. Valentines Day is a turgid, soul destroying exercise in commerciality designed exclusively to fill cinema screens across the world on one specific day of the year. On the basis of this I firmly believe that the majority of people who suffered through this film on the ultimate date night of the year would rather have been sat at home wishing they hadn’t bothered with romance and had, instead, become an old agoraphobic curmudgeon obsessed with cats and how they ‘don’t make em like they used to no more’.
I would have rather sat and watched a two hour art installation that simply featured a revolving slideshow of the cheques that these actors picked up for their shameful contribution to the proud legacy of the quality rom-com. In attempting to emulate a day in the life scenario (Think of this as ‘Shit Cuts’ to Altman’s peerless ‘Short Cuts’) the director, Garry Marshall, simply pings us from one inconsequentiality to another. By the end of watching this film my eyes had rolled back in my head at the sheer brainless, ambitionless, money grabbing, wholly cynical nature of this cinematic aberration. If this is what Valentines Day looks like, slip some me some rohypnol and wake me up when the violation is over.
Optics:
The film looks fine, with a bright and breezy sheen that has impact in high definition.
Sonics:
The audio is a fine representation of the source material despite being neither particularly engaging nor dynamic. It does the job as well as you would hope for.
Extras:
The disc is festooned with extras. You would think that a film this bad probably wouldn’t have may deleted scenes but, you’ll be horrified to know, they actually cut out quite a lot of stuff that was even worse, oh the horror. There’s also a commentary track by Garry Marshall. I listened to a bit of it but I found it hard to maintain my policy of respecting my elders as he bumbled through another star sucking anecdote about the relative measures of Ashton Kutcher (in my mind a talentless charisma void) talent.
Well?
To say that this film wasn’t ‘my cup of tea’ would be an understatement. To say that it was a hollow, vacuous, ambition free, assault on the art of cinema would probably be a fairer representation of my thoughts. However, if you are a cinematic sadist, this may well be the film for you.
Chris Hacking
Director:
Garry Marshall
Starring:
Jessica Alba
Kathy Bates
Jessica Biel
Bradley Cooper
Jamie Foxx
Jennifer Garner
Topher Grace
Anne Hathaway
Carter Jenkins
Ashton Kutcher
Queen Latifah
Taylor Lautner
Best line:
Tagline:
"A Love Story. More or Less."
Description:
Warner Bros
UK
Region free
Rated 12
2Hrs 4mins
1.78:1
DTS-HD 5.1 MA
Audio commentary
Making of featurettes
Trailer
Deleted scenes
Ratings: (Out of 10)
Film 1.0
Optics 8.0
Sonics 6.0
Extras 5.0
Overall 3.0
