“Valentine’s Day” Gives Love a Bad Name

***This review discusses some of the plot points in Valentine's Day.***

When someone looks at a poster or sees a trailer for some celeb-packed movie, he or she will almost invariably think, “Well, with a cast like that, how bad could it be?”

The new answer to that hypothetical question? “As bad as Valentine’s Day.”

Schlock-meister Garry Marshall — who once referred to his films, with no irony whatsoever, as “warmedies” — has given us an ensemble piece that contains fewer laughs than it has Oscar winners. I had always thought of Love Actually, this movie’s obvious antecedent, as a pleasant diversion, but next to Valentine’s Day, it’s a cerebral epic on par with Robert Altman’s Nashville.

The upside of movies with a patchwork quilt of characters is that if you don’t like who’s currently on screen, there’s just a short wait until they cut to someone else. The problem with Valentine’s Day is that every single plotline and character is so utterly charmless that you won’t eagerly await anyone’s return to the screen.

The plot synopsis could eat up my entire word count, but here goes: On February 14, florist Reed (Ashton Kutcher) proposes to live-in girlfriend Morley (Jessica Alba), even though everyone he knows senses that the real love of his life is platonic gal-pal Julia (Jennifer Garner), currently having an affair with heart surgeon Harrison (Patrick Dempsey), who seems too good to be true and probably is.

One of Julia’s young pupils, Edison (Bryce Robinson) nervously awaits the arrival of flowers he wants to give to his crush, while Edison’s nanny Grace (Emma Roberts) prepares to lose her virginity to her equally-intact boyfriend Alex (Carter Jenkins); at the same time, Edison’s grandparents (Shirley MacLaine and Hector Elizondo) deal with a revelation regarding a decades-old transgression.

Topher Grace and Ann Hathaway

Mail-room guy Jason (Topher Grace) plans a romantic evening out with Liz (Anne Hathaway), whom he’s dated for a few weeks, not knowing about her unusual side gig as a phone sex operator. (It’s 2010 — does phone sex still exist?) Liz, meanwhile, is temping for humorless agent Paula (Queen Latifah), whose client Sean (Eric Dane) is a possibly washed-up pro football player. Sean’s neurotic publicist Kara (Jessica Biel) worries that no one is going to show up for her annual “I Hate Valentine’s Day” dinner, although local sportscaster Kelvin (Jamie Foxx) seems interested in her — or at least in what Sean is going to announce at his press conference later in the day.

And then there’s Holden (Bradley Cooper) and Kate (Julia Roberts) who bond over a long plane flight — she’s an Army officer traveling all the way home for Valentine’s Day before turning around and going right back to thick of it.

Bradley Cooper and Julia Roberts