From the archive: "Valentine's Day"

Valentine's Day is a Californian answer to Love, Actually, which means at some point - presumably in the gents at some cocktail lounge somewhere in La-La Land - some executive from backers New Line or Warner Bros. asked the question "Could we make something to rival the flimsiest, laziest strands in Love, Actually - and if so, do you think we might get away with it?" Came the response from the next cubicle: "We could if we put stars in it." And so they did - anyone who's been in a romcom over the past five years, a veritable herd of Jessicas and Jennifers, signing up either out of allegiance to veteran director Garry Marshall, or out of an awareness of Marshall's reputation as a can't-fail Hollywood hitmaker.

Ashton Kutcher - this generation's Cupid, apparently - is the florist having teething trouble with careerist fiancée Jessica Alba; Anne Hathaway's the flappy PA - remember The Devil Wears Prada? - operating a phone sex line after hours (aw, sweet); Patrick Dempsey the surgeon juggling Jennifer Garner (who just so happens to be Kutcher's best friend and back-up plan) with his wife and family - and he's obliged to juggle fruit in his first two scenes, just in case we miss the point. This is as authentic as Valentine's Day gets as a study of modern love: elsewhere, Julia Roberts plays a soldier returning from the Gulf (where, presumably, she was serving in the same 9th Hollywood Divas Division as Meg Ryan's helicopter pilot in Courage Under Fire); two Bulgarians introduced in the background of one scene are last seen walking off arm-in-arm into the sunset together; every song on the soundtrack contains the word "love" in its title, which in no way feels like overkill; and the punchline to one strand, as it was in Mamma Mia!, is "look: he's gay!"

It's never once remotely amusing or romantic, but you can almost admire the degree of packaging involved, and the film's determination to clench its pearly whites and cover all conceivable bases: the obligatory high-school strand finds crossover country star Taylor Swift as a dim bulb beloved of Twilight's Taylor Lautner, who's bequeathed a joke (an actual joke!) about his character's disinclination to remove his shirt in public. On and on it labours, complacent in the belief it'll earn back its costs in being re-run on TV every February 14th from here until hell freezes over, making that day just a mite more unbearable for the unattached; rather than take cameras to shoot it, some sort of massacre may have been in order.

(September 2010)