Valentine’s Day **
It is possible to gather a star-studded ensemble cast and make a frothy, delightful movie about love in its many guises. Richard Curtis did it with Love, Actually and a parcel of international directors accomplished something similar with the duet of Paris, Je t’aime and New York, I Love You. The strengths of those films, however – the ability to tell interesting stories and generate substantive characters despite limited screen time – are absent here. Valentine’s Day’s greatest strength – its cast – becomes its most obvious weakness. With so many actors fighting for a few extra minutes in front of the camera, this feels like a parade of famous faces, not a motion picture. And, while a few of the skits show glimmers of promise, many are time wasters.
