ROMANTIC COMEDY; 2hr 5min
STARRING: Jessica Alba, Bradley Cooper, Patrick Dempsey, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Anne Hathaway, Ashton Kutcher, Julia Roberts
Plane sailing: Cooper and Roberts
There are so many stars in the soap bubble that is director Garry Marshall’s Valentine’s Day even they must have been blinded. The drill is a kind of Crash-very-lite as a bunch of Los Angelenos play out Feb. 14. So Julia (Garner) is two-timed by Harrison (Dempsey) while her BFF, Reed (Kutcher), isn’t feeling the love of his new fiancée, Morley (Alba). Closet phone-sex operator Liz (Hathaway) is all over the shop, sports reporter Kelvin (Foxx) is a Valentine’s Day cynic, and soldier gal Kate (Roberts) and caring sort Holden (Cooper) are seated together on an incoming flight.
How much more is there? With Jessica Biel, Queen Latifah, the Taylors Lautner and Smith, and Emma Roberts (among others) to take care of, oodles. Writer Katherine Fugate keeps them on the go with such force of will there isn’t time to be confused. But as the touchy-feely pattern sets in, there’s a ton of time to reflect that while the total package is amped LA and the performances pop, the outcome is too much, too-trite.
