I Hate Valentine’s Day – Review
February 25th, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized — Movie Critic
It’s the time of year that every filmmaker comes up with a valentine’s day film in bid to profit from re-runs for years to come. This time it comes from the legendary makers from the hit comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but is this attempt a good one?
Story
I hate valentine’s day is a movie about love in opposite world. Genevieve Gernier is a florist who thinks she has it all figured out. Every valentine’s day she is happy about her love life as she has found the magic formula for love. The secret? 5 dates. Basically when she fancies a guy she goes out with him for 5 dates, no more. After those dates the romance is gone and she moves away. But it all changes when she meets Greg Gatlin, a failing restaurant owner. He agrees to continue dating even when the 5 dates story pops up from love-expert Genevieve. Little does she know that at the end of the dates she might be the one feeling love sick.
I hate valentine’s day definitely has an unique story. I really like the idea that the female character is the dominant one for once, especially at the beginning. Less great is the lack of appeal from the other characters in the story. Genevieve’s friends seem to agree with anything she says and her mom and dad don’t add much either despite the attempt from the directors. Because of this the story weakens about 3/4 in while you wait for the obvious to happen.
Presentation
The two main actors also starred in the comedy My Big Fat greek Wedding. So it was really interesting to see that the relationship between the two characters was so different in I hate valentine’s day. John Corbett perfectly portrayed the role as organized business man. This was especially apparent during the karaoke scene where he didn’t sing even when fate picked him to take the stage. Nia Vardalos plays the female character in I have valentine’s day and much like you’d expect she does good. I believed her immediately as the kind of girl who has it all figured out but not really.
You’ll be happy to know that everything is fine on the visual and audio department. The video quality is crisp and apart from some noise during the dark scenes there’s little to report. Audio is top notch, with a decent soundtrack to back it up.
Conclusion
I really wanted to like this as much as I loved My Big Fat Greek Wedding but the truth is that I just don’t. The story gets really weak at some point and it was a struggle to keep watching just so I could see the obvious ending. But still it gets 3 stars for me because the acting performance and general presentation were quite alright.
3 out of 5 stars awarded
I’m Robin Chung, author of the dutch book Tegenlicht. I have a website that brings interesting reading material from all kind of subjects like health and gaming. The website also includes a forum, so you can discuss the articles, and you can order my book from there.
