Watching ‘Valentine’s Day’: “I’m surrounded by assholes!”

Remember that part in Spaceballs where Dark Helmet, played by Rick Moranis, realizes that he’s surrounded by assholes?

A few days ago, I watched the romantic comedy Valentine’s Day, another entry in The Rom-Com Project in the Ensemble Romantic Comedy category. Like Love Actually, the movie centers on a group of people who are connected to each other in different ways. Love Actually focuses on the weeks leading up to Christmas, while Valentine’s Day takes place exclusively on February 14th.

Because Love Actually wasn’t as good as I expected it to be, I wondered if Valentine’s Day would surprise me in a similar way and perhaps be better than the reviews indicated.

Yeah. That wasn’t the case. Valentine’s Day was not the piece of Hollywood mediocrity that I expected, but possibly the worst piece of garbage I have seen in my life. This was largely because, much like Dark Helmet in Spaceballs, I felt surrounded by assholes. 

I won’t sugarcoat it. Almost every single character in this movie is an asshole.

First, on the low end of the asshole scale, you have the teen jocks played by Taylor Lautner and Taylor Swift. TayTay are really into each other and make out while they’re being interviewed by local news people. This is played as high comedy for some reason. Also, Taylor Swift makes sure we know that she is not a cheerleader and in fact a member of the dance team, because cheerleaders wear short skirts and Taylor Swift wears T-shirts, in case you didn’t know. Anyway, they’re on the low end of the asshole scale because they don’t have that many scenes in the movie, and their main crime is making out too much in public.

Then there’s Jamie Foxx, who isn’t that much of an asshole, but definitely is that whiny employee that bosses can’t stand because he acts like he gets to tell Kathy Bates what news he will or will report on.

Slightly higher on the asshole scale is the character played by Patrick Dempsey, a married doctor who is cheating on his wife (in other words, a total change of pace for Patrick Demspey). I would normally rate a philanderer much higher on the asshole scale, but his character has so little characterization other than “married doctor who cheats on his wife” that I can’t bother to care what he does. He’s a 2 on the scale, where 1 rates as an “asshole” and 10 rates as a “total fucking asshole douchebag.”

Rating a 3 on the asshole scale is Topher Grace’s character (I like you, Topher Grace. Please be in better movies from now on.) He has been dating Anne Hathaway for two weeks. When he finds out that she works on a phone sex line, he gets all put out because his innocent Indiana ears can’t handle this. Later, he learns the error of his ways and that Slut-Shaming Is Bad. He apologizes to her. Anne Hathaway forgives him. Before she forgives him, she mentions that she’s sorry for the way he found out about her work because it was awkward, but refuses to apologize for her job. In a different movie, I might cheer on this feminist moment, but in this movie, I just marvel that I’m supposed to care about a couple that manages to conjure up this much drama after dating for two weeks. Yet they say the “love” word at the end, and there’s a “charming” moment where Anne Hathaway turns down a paying phone call so she can have sex with her boyfriend instead, and I’m supposed to believe that a guy can move from “I am so uncomfortable with this!” to “I am so fine with this!” over a few hours, for a woman he’s known for two weeks. Shut up, both of you.

Then you have Emma Roberts, a self-involved teen who wants to have sex with her boyfriend, and she dumps all of her sex plans on the unwilling ears of her poor teacher Kristen Schaal, who has to listen to her student’s sex plan, and god, it’s awful. Poor Kristen Schaal. Then Emma Roberts decides that it’s better not to plan sex and that it should be spontaneous and in the moment. Yeah…sure. God forbid you use protection or anything. Planning sex actually sounds like a damn good idea when it’s the first time, but what do I know.

Next, we have Ashton Kutcher. Ashton Kutcher’s character didn’t do anything horribly, screamingly wrong – just several little things that really cheesed me off. First of all, he proposes to his girlfriend (played by Jessica Alba) the second after she wakes up in the morning. Literally – the very second. He launches into a huge speech about things his father said when he was a kid without even saying “Good morning.” Then, after he asks her to marry him, he slips the ring on her finger before she actually says yes – a rom-com cliche that I despise. Later, after she tells him she can’t marry him after all, after she’s packed a suitcase to leave, he starts taking the clothes out of her suitcase and being all in denial that she’s leaving him, and I know I’m supposed to be all touched or whatever that he’s in denial, but holy shit, Ashton, respect her fucking decision and listen to what she has to say. The fact that he’s supposed to be The Hero of the movie makes these little actions worse.

Following Ashton is Shirley MacLaine, who cheated on her husband Hector Elizondo very early in their marriage. It was a brief affair, and these things happen sometimes, but then she makes the grand romantic gesture of showing up in a public place and…telling him that he needs to forgive her because people make mistakes in relationships sometimes. NO! The person who was unfaithful does not get to dictate terms of forgiveness, ASSHOLE.

Even worse than Shirley MacLaine’s character is Jessica Biel’s, who is possibly the whiniest female character in any rom-com I’ve ever seen even though she’s only 1/21 of this star-studded cast. She is supposedly a successful publicist, but she completely falls the fuck apart on every Valentine’s Day because she doesn’t have a man. (She doesn’t know how to operate her treadmill, either, and when she accidentally makes it faster instead of slower, she flails on it “comedically.”) She lies on the floor of her office and whines how she’s always alone on Valentine’s Day, and has no clue why no one wants to attend her “I Hate Valentine’s Day” party. (No, she really has no clue why this party would not appeal to any of her friends.) She has a beleaguered assistant who covers for her unprofessional ass when she lies on the floor of her office, and then complains that she is always “100% alone on Valentine’s Day,” even though she has a beleaguered assistant who covers for her unprofessional ass when she lies on the floor of her office, and Jamie Foxx actually winds up being attracted to her pathetic, spineless ways. When her client Eric Dane mentions that he really wants a family, her eyes light up and you can almost see her ovulating in front of you. This whiny, pathetic mess is an insult to women, I swear.

Still, even Jessica Biel’s character does not manage to be as much of an asshole as Jennifer Garner’s character, the Queen of All Assholes.

Jennifer Garner plays an elementary school teacher (because female teachers in romantic comedies never have students younger than eight), who wants to fly to visit her boyfriend Patrick Dempsey on Valentine’s Day, even though her BFF Ashton Kutcher tells her that her boyfriend is married. Keep in mind that he does not supply her with the theory that the man is married, but a fact because Patrick Demspey bought flowers from him (Ashton) earlier that day. But Jennifer Garner flies to find him anyway, because she’s the dumbest person on the face of the planet. Then she does find out that her boyfriend is, in fact, married. She goes to the restaurant where he is sitting with his wife, delivers an unfunny monologue about how he is a pig, and exposes his cheating ways.

This is treated as a triumphant moment of GRRL POWER and refusing to be treated like crap by a boyfriend, except for the nagging little detail that she publicly exposed the affair in front of his wife. The fact that his wife has to find out about her husband’s infidelity in public matters not to Jennifer Garner, ball-buster extraordinaire! It is perfectly acceptable to inform wives about their husbands’ infidelity in the most humiliating way possible!

She made me so angry it scared me a little bit.

As you can see, I was surrounded by assholes. The non-asshole characters were played by Jessica Alba, Kathy Bates, Bradley Cooper, Eric Dane, Hector Elizondo, Carter Jenkins, Queen Latifah, George Lopez, Julia Roberts, and Bryce Robinson (and I guess Anne Hathaway wasn’t so bad, really), but none of them were developed well enough to be likable or interesting, either. It’s really not their fault, and it’s not the fault of the actors who played the asshole characters, either. The writing was just…yuck.

I have now watched two ensemble rom-coms, and the compare and contrast with Love Actually was illuminating. I didn’t adore Love Actually, but one thing I’ll say for the movie is that the characters felt more like real people to me. With some storylines in particular (Emma Thompson/Alan Rickman’s story, Laura Linney’s story), I believed that these characters had actual lives, and the movie was just giving us little glimpses of moments of their lives. This movie was just an excuse to cash in on the Love Actually formula and give Hollywood stars a chance to play dress-up.

Also, I know I said I would review movies that you all hate, but it doesn’t get worse than this, right? I don’t know if I can handle it, people. I really don’t.