Charm offensive
Valentine’s Day
Big Home Video/Warner Brothers, Rs 399
Rating: 1 star
As far as rom-coms go, Richard Curtis’ 2003 multi-narrative, criss-crosser of a film, Love Actually, set a benchmark. It was so much romantic comedy as multi-toned domestic drama featuring love, strategems and heartbreaks, all done in Curtis’ light touched style. Gary Marshall’s 2010 rom-com Valentine’s Day attempts the same thing. But if it’s a limbo dance, the movie kicks the bar by reaching a floor-kind of low. Oh, it’s a star-studded cast alright — Julia Roberts as an armywoman returning home for a day to meet a loved one and striking up conversation with fellow traveller on the plane Bradley Cooper (remember him only from The Hangover please); Ashton Kutcher lovestruck florist; Jamie Foxx as the hardnosed sports journo being forced to cover a ‘soft’ Valentine’s Day beat... the roll-call goes on. If there’s one strand of the film that brings some mirth to the whole affair, it’s the receptionist Anne Hathaway, who moonlights as a sex phone operator, which her date doesn’t find too sexy. Luckily, the film ends, with viewers shaking their shoulders and asking themselves, ‘Did I just waste 125 minutes of my life?’