<p>Valentine’s Day lacks focus </p><p><em>Too many stars, not enough substance </em></p><p>Photo copyright cleared </p><p>Julia Fiztpatrick (Jennifer Garner) receives flowers from Reed Bennett (Ashton Kutcher)in the </p><p>new film <em>Valentine’s Day</em>. </p><p>James Butler </p><p>Anne Hathaway (great in <em>Get Smart </em>and receiving an Oscar nomination for <em>Rachel Getting Married</em>) and even lesser ones like Jennifer Garner are completely mailing it in, it gets hard to really care about any of the characters’ problems. <br>The screenplay itself is one of the movie’s redeeming factors. Despite some cringe-worthy lines, it manages to have points that were actually pretty funny. <br>With a few too many story lines, however, it stretches itself too thin, trying to move the audience with characters that were not given enough time or effort throughout the film. <br>It also suffers from <em>Crash </em>syndrome, i.e., it bashes you over the head with its interconnected story lines and overarching theme about the power of love. <br>The story line with Swift and Lautner was completely unnecessary, and Swift gives one of the worst performances I have ever seen in a big budget film. <br>This attempt to cash in on Swift’s recent Grammy and Lautner’s <em>New Moon </em>success is obvious, and with the terrible performance each delivers, it was clearly the wrong decision. </p><p><em>Contributor </em></p><p>Most movies in Hollywood these days often have a major star attached to them like George Clooney, Christian Bale, or Jennifer Aniston, but it really is rare for a movie to have as many huge names as </p><p><em>Valentine’s Day</em>. </p><p>Clearly catering to the mainstream </p><p>date movie audience, <em>Valentine’s Day </em>is </p><p>huge on star power, but very low on actual substance. <br>The biggest surprise about this movie was how they managed to get so many major stars into a motion picture and not get at least one memorable performance out of any of them. <br>The high profile cast includes Ashton <br>Kutcher, Jessica Alba, Julia Roberts, Bradley Cooper (most recently from <em>The Hangover</em>), Anne Hathaway, Jessica Biel, Eric Dane and Patrick Dempsey (both of <em>Grey’s Anatomy</em>), Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Taylor Swift and Taylor Lautner. But none of them show any real enthusiasm for their role. <br>Kutcher was the only actor to even come close, but his often cheesy dialogue killed any real sympathy I felt for his character. <br>I wanted to like so many of these characters, but when fine actresses like </p><p><em>Valentine’s Day </em>is not the worst </p><p>romantic comedy I’ve seen, but it has too many stars and story lines, and doesn’t do enough to make any of them interesting. . </p><p>Page Design by A&amp;E Editor Gillian Perry </p>