Valentine's Day (2010) * * *

Directed by:  Garry Marshall

Starring:  Ashton Kutcher, Jennifer Garner, Patrick Dempsey, George Lopez, Hector Elizondo, Shirley MacLaine, Jamie Foxx, Jessica Biel, Topher Grace, Anne Hathaway, Queen Latifah, Eric Dane, Julia Roberts, Bradley Cooper, Taylor Swift, Taylor Lautner, Jessica Alba, Emma Roberts

Just typing up the names of the actors who starred in Valentine's Day is tiring enough.  Trying to recount their various, intertwining subplots will likely have me rambling on far longer than I'd like.
But, at least it would be in service of a romantic comedy (or should I say a series of romantic comedies) which manages to maintain a certain likability and charm.   Most of the people in it are decent, except for one or two who get what's coming to them.   There are one or two subplots and a few more characters who I wouldn't have minded seeing hit the cutting room floor, but as far as rom-coms go you could do a lot worse.

Valentine's Day stars so many A-list actors it's as if Garry Marshall didn't want to turn anyone away.
It's to Marshall's credit he keeps things moving along as well as he does.    I will mention a few of the more important characters and leave how the rest fit in to be discovered by you, perhaps by next Valentine's Day.   Florist Reed (Kutcher) just got engaged to a young lady named Morley (Alba), who not only doesn't flaunt her engagement ring, she doesn't even wear it because she didn't want to put up a million questions.   That should be a red flag to Reed that this engagement might not last through lunchtime.   Reed's best friend is Julia (Garner), a schoolteacher having an affair with married, two-timing surgeon Harrison (Dempsey), who lies to her about having to travel to San Francisco on business on Valentine's Day.   He says he is about to divorce, but that is not so, and Reed discovers this because Harrison isn't exactly discreet about ordering flowers for his wife and mistress.

We also meet Liz (Hathaway), a receptionist  who moonlights as a phone sex operator and her new boyfriend Jason (Grace) is put off by her swanky, porn movie music phone ring which signifies a client calling in.   She hates having to duck out to perform phone sex, but considering how much business she generates, she should simply make that her full time gig.   There are other characters for the movie to juggle, including a gay quarterback, a soldier traveling home to see a loved one, a sportscaster who wants to be taken seriously by his television station, a high school senior who wants to lose her virginity to her boyfriend, and a publicist who holds an annual dinner bashing Valentine's Day because she can't find a date.   That publicist is played by Jessica Biel, and in a movie requiring numerous heavy suspensions of disbelief, this may be the heaviest of them all.

There are more characters who we have to keep track of in our minds as they search for love and happiness on the most romantic day of the year.   Some already have it, some are looking for it, and others have lost it or will shortly.   No matter, because Valentine's Day still works on its intended level as an exaggerated romantic comedy with an all-star cast of likable actors.    Garry Marshall followed up Valentine's Day with the less successful New Year's Eve and the sorry Mother's Day. 
I don't know of any truth to the rumor that he was about to direct a movie about Arbor Day at the time of his unfortunate passing.   But, Garry Marshall demonstrated a flair for intelligent romantic comedy and in Valentine's Day, he doesn't just perform the trick once, but over and over again.