I Hate Valentine's Day (The Movie)

I know, I know. I should have known better. I should have used those two hours to read, or clean, or self-harm. Pretty much anything would have served as a better alternative to enduring Garry Marshall's drunken recollection of what Love Actually looked like. Also known as Valentine's Day.

A year ago, two films were released that seemed to decide the fate of VD. Friday the 13th and He's Just Not That Into You. During some coke-fuelled brainstorm, execs must have examined the success of both and come to a terrifying conclusion. What if they combined the glossy/greedy ensemble cast of one and the opportunistic release date of the other?

The rush was then on, as with all great pieces of art, to achieve a specific release date. In this case, VD weekend 2010. Any working actor who had a few hours spare was corralled into taking part and the producers made sure they appealed to EVERY demographic with their casting choices.

Tweens - Taylor Swift and Taylor Lautner (the latter, still chilling as some sort of baby/bodybuilder hybrid)

Old people - Shirley Maclaine and Kathy Bates (both putting one finger up at the Academy that awarded them Oscars)

Guys, dragged along by their girlfriends - Jessica Alba and Jessica Biel (neither even coming remotely close to showing any flesh though)

Girls that read Heat - Ashton Kutcher and Jennifer Garner (playing best friends - hey, stop laughing back there)

Black people - Jamie Foxx and Queen Latifah (offensive stereotypes - check)

People that watch Grey's Anatomy - Eric Dane and Patrick Dempsey (McSleazy and McGreasy or whatever the fuck they're called)

I'm still missing out Julia Roberts, Anne Hathway, Bradley Cooper, Emma Roberts, Topher Grace, your mum, your gran, that guy you sometimes see on your way to work with that hat, you etc.

It's one of those films I watched, while mentally trying to make a list of reasons I hated it. Never a good sign. This is what I can remember, although I should have brought a notepad.

1. Jessica Biel plays a totally underwritten attempt to appeal to 'normal' women. An amalgamation of Liz Lemon and Bridget Jones - the kind of woman that falls off the treadmill, spills stuff everywhere, stumbles her words, is eternally single and is constantly eating. In other words, things that Jessica Biel would never, ever do.

2. Jamie Foxx is black. This means he has to try and teach Jessica Biel how to fist bump.

3. The film is like really modern and shit. This translates into the word BlackBerry being involved in every other scene.

4. There is a 'cute kid' that falls in love with Jennifer Garner, and by cute I mean 'so precocious, you feel the urge to force your entire arm down his throat just so you can make his heart stop beating'.

5. Poor, poor florist Ashton Kutcher gets dumped by Jessica Alba and has to settle for Jennifer Garner in the same day. We're supposed to feel sorry for this douche?

6. Apparently every Indian restaurant turns into a Bollywood musical after 10.

7. Julia Roberts plays a soldier on the way back from Afghanistan. Ranks as one of the most ridiculous star/job match-ups since Tara Reid played an archaeologist in Alone in the Dark.

8. Queen Latifah is sassy, a massive departure from her other performances where she has played quite sassy, very sassy and only sassy when provoked.

9. This exchange between Jessica Biel and Jamie Foxx: 'I need more chocolate' 'I am the chocolate'

10. Anne Hathaway plays a poetry major who moonlights as an adult sex line operator. Enough said.

11. Taylor Lautner has a 'hilarious' in-joke where he states that he isn't very comfortable with taking his shirt off in public. Yes, well neither are we circus freak.

12. Despite being a film about how some people hate Valentine's Day as it can be a tough day for single people to endure, we never once see a believably ordinary singleton, battling their debilitating loneliness while weeping into a large glass of wine. Instead we have numerously over-styled glamazons whining about nothing, while showcasing their best side to the camera.

All of this complaining is totally irrelevant though. The film has just opened to what may be the biggest ever opening for a romantic comedy in the US - an estimated $58 million. They're already plotting the sequel - entitled New Year's Eve. When will this end? Will the follow-up just be called Tuesday? Is any holiday, day, time safe?

What's depressing is that the success of VD and the continued success of Avatar (biggest film ever etc) shows that, more than ever, scripts are in fact totally pointless. VD could have consisted of the big-name cast all reciting nutritional information from cans of soup and it still would have been a hit. It's the most horribly manufactured film I have seen for a long time but no one seems to care.

It went down a storm in the cinema when I saw it. Everyone laughed throughout at the increasingly tortured attempts at humour. They also laughed at the gay storyline in the film, which wasn't actually funny, but two men on screen together is apparently hilarious. Also, the racial cliches (that bordered on offensive), coupled with the narrow-minded xenophobia in the upcoming travesty Leap Year highlight a worryingly parochial worldview for films that are marketed as lightweight entertainment.

Perhaps I'm taking it all a bit too seriously. But someone has to. The majority of our fellow cinema-going humanoids have gone out and accepted the putrid force-fed garbage that VD offered up this past weekend, but at what cost? We still don't know about the long-term problems these films cause. In 30 years we'll look back, shaking our heads at the lack of medical warnings attached to movies such as this. Think about what all this sugar is doing to your teeth.