ONTD

Todd McCarthy of Variety pans it:

As gooey and lacking in protein as a chocolate holiday bonbon, "Valentine's Day" plays like a feature-length commercial produced by the Friends of the Valentine Promotional Society. Almost every scene is larded by talk of flowers, gifts, cards, restaurants and other ways to spend gobs of money on a single day, all delivered by a raft of attractive stars or semi-stars rotated on and off by director Garry Marshall. Never was there a film more release date-targeted than this one, which only means that, once opening weekend is gone, so will be the audience.

Some teen viewers may be drawn by the lure of the two Taylors, but their time onscreen together arguably reps the film's low point; Swift, especially, seems entirely undirected, as she jumps around, makes faces and jabbers on inanely. If she's to have a film career, she needs to find a skilled director to tamp her down and channel her obviously abundant energy.


Sheri Linden of The Hollywood Reporter hates it:

Taking its name from cupid's holiday with all the inspired creativity of a filing label, the film crisscrosses endlessly -- endlessly -- among a Whitman's sampler of cutouts passing as characters. Drawn by the starry cast and the film's built-in date-movie cachet, weekend moviegoers will send boxoffice love notes to the New Line release. But the affair is likely to be short-lived as the reality sets in that "Valentine's Day" is yet another Hollywood romantic comedy that's all but devoid of romance and laughs.

Foxx and Grace survive with their comic timing intact, and Garner's inherent geniality lends her role some charm. But this travelogue of Los Angeles landmarks, in which low-riders and Indian restaurants serve as "colorful" symbols of multiculturalism, is more valentine to the flower industry than a true love connection.


John Hazelton of Screen Daily vomits:

A couple of touching moments aside, Valentine’s Day is as blatantly engineered and resolutely frothy as mid-February date movies get.

Comic overacting is rampant, but there are a couple of quieter performances - most notably from Julia Roberts and The Hangover’s Bradley Cooper – and a few more serious scenes.

Mostly, though, Marshall keeps the tone feather light and the pace brisk, delivering a film that feels like a handful of inter-cut TV sitcoms.


Karina Longworth of The Miami New Times pisses on it:

In Pretty Woman, director Garry Marshall's personal cinematic high score, the opening credits close (and the closing credits open) with the voice of a street freak, barely noticeable in wide shot, chanting an absurd mantra — "Welcome to Hollywood, land of dreams!" Twenty years later, Marshall dips into the same well to bookend his embarrassingly star-studded stiff, Valentine's Day.

The credits read like a red-carpet roll call: Jessica Alba! Jessica Biel! Julia Roberts! Two guys who used to be on That '70s Show and also that one lady and the other guy from Alias!

Valentine's Day's rote episodic construction reduces each of its couplings to a couple of shopworn money shots, flattening any potential for their chemistry or our vicarious pleasure. Shoddy enough within its primary genre, Valentine's Day becomes deadly in its attempt to be a Los Angeles ensemble movie in which divine coincidence rules the day as archetypes from different walks of life intersect, and overhead shots of a freeway interchange drive the point home. Think of it as the Crash of romance, the Short Cuts of bullshit.


Some random drunk lady from some place called Urban Cinefile schmoozes:

A perfect date movie with more stars than script appeal, Valentine's Day reminds us that the gift of love means different things to different people.

Jennifer Garner forms the heartbeat of the film (she is every bit like sunshine, as her character demands); it is her story with which we engage most readily. Anne Hathaway is also terrific as Liz... those who are easy to please and looking for a non-demanding ode to love that is as sweet as the candy, they won't be disappointed.


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