Release Date (UK) – 12 February
Certificate (UK) – 12A
Country – USA
Director – Garry Marshall
Runtime – 125 mins

Starring – Julia Roberts, Jessica Alba, Ashton Kutcher, Bradley Cooper

Valentines Day is basically an American Love Actually, with a similarly excessively star studded cast whose characters all have overlapping love stories. Set in L.A. over the course of one Valentines Day the plot centres around various couples including florist Reed (Ashton Kutcher) who proposes to girlfriend Morley (Jessica Alba) on Valentines Day morning but has to tell best friend Julia (Jennifer Garner) that her new Doctor boyfriend (Patrick Dempsey) is married. Meanwhile there are numerous other couple all in various relationship stages or crisis on Valentines Day who are all in some way linked through friendship or work to another of the couples, but their stories are so tedious and so many I won’t bother to list them. In Love Actually this idea works well but unfortunately in Valentines Day there are simply far too many couples so not enough time is devoted to any of them to allow for the audience to understand and empathise with their situations.

Nevertheless the films ensemble cast are all such renowned performers that the film is never unbelievable and the various relationships will enthral you enough to wish for happy resolutions. There are also plenty of laughs and the film progresses along smoothly even if it does become a bit too glossy. The two younger teen couples stories do feel a little out of place and it does seem as if Taylor Lautner and Emma Roberts are there their simply for their star pulling – Twilights Lautner is only in a couple ofextremely brief scenes, although he does get one of the more better satirical comedic lines as he tells his  girlfriend ‘I don’t like to take my shirt off in public’ – as if Lautner! Many of the films greatest gags do lie in such stars references to their own personas or films – the film is directed by Pretty Woman director Gerry Marshall and there are a few Pretty Woman in-jokes, including from Julia Roberts in the films final scene.

Because of the abundance of stories none of the moments that are supposed to be emotion grabbing and touching are involving enough but this doesn’t make for an awful film, just a bit lacking of what you would expect from a romantic comedy. If Love actually hadn’t already done what Valentines Day attempts to do so well then l’m sure I wouldn’t have been so disappointed. As a Valentines Day film this is a perfect watch and will satisfy the general rom com audiences with no problems, but I will be going to see the classic Breakfast at Tiffany’s myself this Sunday.

Valentines Day Trailer