Valentine’s Day

It came as absolute­ly no sur­prise that, about an hour and forty five min­utes in to Valentine’s Day – the time­ly new film by Gar­ry Mar­shall – there was an enor­mous Indi­an wed­ding song and dance rou­tine. For, despite Valentine’s Day mar­ket­ing itself as an all-star, Hol­ly­wood, don’t‑call-it-a-cash-in rom-com, it is in many ways a Bol­ly­wood com­e­dy, set in LA.

First­ly, it is long. Sweet moth­er of Rudolph Valenti­no, it is long – two hours long by our watch. Which belies the rather sim­ple plot: one Valentine’s Day in the life of an unlike­ly col­lec­tion of LA res­i­dents as they fall in, out and through love.

Sec­ond­ly, every­one and every­thing in the film is ludi­crous­ly good look­ing. This is a film where Anne Hath­away is an admin assis­tant who talks dirty on her mobile for a lit­tle extra cash. Where a florist can live in a pas­tel paint­ed canal-side house in Lit­tle Venice. Where Jes­si­ca Gar­ner is a pri­ma­ry school teacher. No dis­re­spect to Mrs Tat­ton, but my pri­ma­ry school teacher cer­tain­ly did not wear five inch wedges and go out in skin-tight cou­ture (at least, not when we were around.)

In Valentine’s Day the sun is always shin­ing, LA is as fresh and bright as a wash­ing pow­der com­mer­cial and no-one real­ly has to do any work. Like Shahrukh Khan’s Mum­bai, the LA of Valentine’s Day is a fan­tas­tic, spot­less sim­u­lacrum of the city that only sleeps dur­ing surgery.

The film is also rem­i­nis­cent of Bol­ly­wood in terms of the sheer size of the cast. Take a look at that poster; this is a film with name weight. Julia Roberts, Jamie Foxx, Anne Hath­away, Ash­ton Kutch­er, Jes­si­ca Alba, Patrick Dempsey, Queen Lat­i­fah- the list goes on and on. Over the course of Valentine’s Day there are sev­en cou­ples, a cou­ple of cameos (most sur­pris­ing­ly Mel of Flight of the Con­chords fame) and a healthy sup­port­ing cast.

The set pieces, most often pro­vid­ed by rather ham­my and two-dimen­sion­al, if not straight-down offen­sive, ​‘for­eign­ers’ were like some­thing from low-bud­get Malyalam come­dies. Peo­ple fall over, cute kids back-chat, pret­ty girls car­ry around enor­mous ted­dy bears and old peo­ple make pub­lic fools of themselves.

But back to that wed­ding scene. There the cou­ple were, cel­e­brat­ing their recent nup­tials, when Jen­nifer Gar­ner starts smack­ing all holy hag­ga out of a heart-shaped piña­ta. Then Jamie Foxx turns up and starts play­ing the piano (since Ray, a quick tin­kling of the ivories is most like­ly in all his con­tracts), a teenage cou­ple talk about the impor­tance of absti­nence in the back of a van and every­one in the restau­rant starts to dance.

If that sounds like your idea of a good time, then you’re in for a treat. If it sounds like a load of schmaltzy, naff, ridicu­lous­ness then maybe just stay in this Valentine’s Day.