Post by westwood.

What happens when you bring together an ultra-glamorous cast of (mostly) good-lookin’ stars, predictable semi-witty banter, and toss in a side of awkwardly weighty profound statements?

You get Valentine’s Day.

One would think that this sickly-sweet fluff, true to the spirit of the day it follows, would have no worthy philosophical content. But, strangely enough, that’s not quite the case. I mean sure, the rich stars romping around in the film drop some pseudo-profound bombs, but they all ring rather hollow. However, one of them caught my attention.

At one point, Ashton Kutcher exclaims to Jennifer Garner, “It’s Valentine’s Day… you don’t think, you just do!”

Ironically enough the characters that find happiness do exactly the opposite of this, and the characters who end up miserable follow this mantra.  If we’re going with the advice that Ashton should have given… the advice that the characters actually followed… he should have modified Plato’s famous quote (“The unexamined life is not worth living”) and spewed something like “Think about your relationship, douchebag.” Plus, it might’ve made Kutcher look like less of a moron.

Are you scratching your head, unsure that you are seeing the same flufferific prettyfest I was? Let’s take a look at the characters and their relationships, and see who found happiness, who didn’t, and how critical thinking played in.

Patrick Dempsey – McCheater (yet somehow still the same character as Grey’s) didn’t juggle well. He obviously didn’t think it through. Jennifer Garner was getting way too clingy to be a successful mistress. He was just acting on the whims of his penis, and it left him miserable.

Jessica Alba – you’d think the odd duck out, because thinking about her relationship made her leave it, which was for the best. But, it made her miserable. Plus, it was sheer unthinking dumbassness that had her a) agree to marry him in the morning and b) even be in a relationship that was obviously not suited to her in the first place.

Eric Dane – he didn’t want to deal with the mental or social rigours of coming out. However, he thought about it, decided to man up, and voila! Mr. Sexy (Bradley Cooper) comes back and the two of them can happily out-Brangelina anybody with their pecs.

Anne Hathaway – she was the best part of the whole movie. And the smartest. She got happiness just for being smart. And awesome.

Topher Grace – once he thought about things, he came around and realized that his girlfriend being a fetish phone-sex operator probably wasn’t a dealbreaker. Guess what he got? That’s right. Happiness.
It would be easy to illustrate this with all the other characters, but there were way, way, way, way too many of them. But the point is this: Valentine’s Day made an attempt to be profoundly philosophical, miserably failed with all it’s supposedly-memorable mantras, but actually proved a very good ethic of using your brain in a roundabout way. Ironically, this was the very opposite of the ethic it tried to promote. And the sad part is, the dumb tweens who went to watch Taylor & Taylor exchange saliva will take the message of do without thinking at face value and go out and get pregnant. Damn you, Hollywood.