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RATING:  
SINGAPORE : Where can you find Jennifer Garner and Patrick Dempsey; Anne Hathaway and Topher Grace; the aunt-and-niece team of Julia and Emma Roberts; two Jessicas (Biel and Alba); two Taylors (Swift and Lautner); one hot-blooded male brood of Ashton Kutcher, Bradley Cooper, Eric Dane and Jamie Foxx; an Oscar winning silver-haired trio of Shirley Maclaine, Hector Elizondo and Kathy Bates; and one Queen (Latifah, that is) all together in one movie?
That would be Garry Marshall's goop-drenched "Valentine's Day". It's either a star-studded box office sure-thing or the biggest bag of mixed nuts we've ever seen.
With its glitzy mix of both popular eye-candy and talented actors in pretty confetti roles of endearing charm and heart-shaped schmaltz, it's hard not to immediately compare "Valentine's Day" to "Love, Actually".
However, while this V-day ensemble is by no means a disappointing fiasco, it doesn't match up to the bawdy fun and genuine sentiment of Richard Curtis' 2003 Christmas-themed Brit-schtick chick-flick.
In the tradition of multiple character arcs, the film jumps around a vast tapestry of loosely connected story strands, which, in this case, comprises of sun-kissed Los Angelos going about this much-hyped/dreaded day.
With the somewhat contrived and predictable situations that include a proposal, a two-timing playboy, a kid's first infatuation, and a break-up, veteran chick-flick helmer Marshall's ("Pretty Woman", "Beaches") usually pointed direction feels unfocused, overly broad and extravagantly sappy with an uneven pace.
In the end, even the most starry-eyed of audiences will be exhausted by the sheer number of blatantly engineered cute stereotypes and pencil-thin character outlines.
That said, there are a few touching moments with sincere and entertaining performances: Hathaway as a phone-sex moonlighter, Maclaine and Elizondo as the token old couple, and the easy chemistry between Roberts (the older one) and Cooper.
Throw in a fun director's cameo, a hilarious "Pretty Woman" reference at the end of the movie, and a gorgeous young Maclaine in glorious black-and-white film glory, and this unabashedly feel-good mass-audience-pleaser has just enough to make it impossible to completely dislike. No matter how cynically we might try.
- TODAY/il
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