Valentine's Day

Director: Garry Marshall

In the last six or seven years, British and American movie makers have developed a new genre of film, one that doesn’t actually have a name, but which can be described in a simple sentence: it’s a movie with several story lines, a dozen stars and starlets, mostly about love and relationships, with all of this served up in a funny, non-serious manner. Starting with the marvelous “Love Actually,” movies of this kind filled the box office, capturing the attention of movie-goers all around the world. You can tell, with absolute confidence, that the new creation from famous director Garry Marshall (“Pretty Woman,” “Runaway Bride”) is yet another example of the mentioned genre.

The greatest question about “Valentine’s Days,” and all the movies of the kind, is whether the number of stars - Julia Roberts, Ashton Kutcher, Jamie Foxx, Jessica Alba, Bradley Cooper and many more - in the movie is directly proportional to its quality. Well, in this particular case I would say that some of the starring actors really did pull off a good, solid performance. However, exchanging some of the actors with less famous ones wouldn’t have harmed the movie, either.

The film tells a lot of different stories, most of which don’t even connect with each other, with dozens of different people taking part in them. The one thing that is common for each and every one of these stories is that they all take place on Feb. 14, and are somehow connected with the concept of love. Sadly, because of the large number of different story lines, some unprepared viewers might easily lose whatever connection that might exist between them, and therefore, lose interest in the film. And, of course, since this less than two-hour long film includes more than ten different story lines, the viewer, probably, won’t experience any kind of strong emotion, simply because each story itself cannot be investigated deeply enough in such a short period of time.

Nevertheless, even though “Valentine’s Day” cannot be called “a serious picture,” it still can summon some positive emotions, and some scenes can even be called extremely funny. So, if you are a fan of light and not-so-serious films, “Valentine’s Day” is definitely a film for you.

Now showing in Latvia and Lithuania Opens March, 19 in Lithuania