Valentine’s Day is an ensemble film directed by Garry Marshall which covers the lives of over a dozen Los Angeles residents and shows how some of their paths cross, are entwined, or intersect. Each of these lives will somehow be changed once the day is over.
There’s Reed (Ashton Kutcher), a florist who proposes to his girlfriend Morley (Jessica Alba), who accepts. However as the day progresses Morley starts to feel the pressure and makes a surprising choice. Julia (Jennifer Garner) is in love with her boyfriend Harrison (Patrick Dempsey) and although he tells Julia he’s divorced, he’s not; when he buys flowers for both his ladies where Reed works, Reed must decide whether to be the bearer of bad news to Julia.
Meanwhile things seem to be going great for Liz (Anne Hathaway) and Jason (Topher Grace) who have been dating for two weeks, but Liz moonlights as a phone sex operator to help pay off her large student loan and is keeping her other job a secret from Jason and goes to great lengths to do so.
There’s also the anti-Valentine’s Day crowd which includes Kara (Jessica Biel), a publicist who throws an “I Hate Valentine’s Day" dinner every year. Also part of this crowd is sports reporter Kelvin Moore (Jamie Foxx) who is the #2 sports reporter for Los Angeles, but as it’s a slow news day he’s given an assignment which he finds humiliating – to cover Valentine’s Day around the city. Luckily for Kelvin he learns that star football player Sean Jackson's (Eric Dane) career is in question. Kelvin then has to spend the day covering Sean and working with his publicist Kara. There’s also Kate (Julia Roberts), an Army Captain returning home on leave; on the 14-hour flight, she meets Holden (Bradley Cooper) and the two strike up a friendship.
Rounding out the ensemble are Queen Latifah, Taylor Lautner, Taylor Swift, Hector Elizondo, and Shirley MacLaine.
Not all characters' paths cross and some are admittedly there to further plots, but the movie works. Ensemble movies can be tough; there needs to be enough time given to any one story and in some cases certain characters get shorted.
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