Valentine Day to Forget

For fans of bonbons and Hallmark sentiment who wish Valentine Day lasted forever, Garry Marshall's 123-minute movie arrives like the answer to a prayer.

Taking its name from cupid's holiday with all the inspired creativity of a filing label, "Valentine's Day" 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 box office 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.

For the latter, audiences will have to wait for the obligatory end-credit outtakes. Until then, they've got the antics of a bunch of witless, good-looking Angelenos variously chasing or avoiding l'amour. At the center of the multistrand story are Reed (Ashton Kutcher) and his best friend, Julia (Jennifer Garner). She's madly in love with a doctor (Patrick Dempsey) and more than a little surprised that florist Reed's career-gal girlfriend (Jessica Alba) has accepted his wedding proposal.

Popping the question on Valentine's Day, he believes, has given him license to be a "sappy cheeseball" for the next 24 hours. That seems to be the guiding principle of Katherine Fugate's script as well, which subs clunking punchlines for froth and snap and which spares almost no one in the ensemble from mouthing banalities about the ways of the heart.

"It's Valentine's Day," Reed enthuses to Julia at one point. "You don't think; you just do."

Reed's flower shop serves as the hub for much of the action. Among those stopping in to order bouquets are a precocious fifth-grader (Bryce Robinson) and Julia's two-timing boyfriend. The latter event poses a quandary for Reed, which he hashes out with his right-hand man (George Lopez): Should he tell his best friend the truth about the good doctor? That's the closest the film gets to dramatic tension.