Every year, Valentine’s Day sends couples flocking to the movies to celebrate. This year, “Valentine’s Day” and “Dear John” were the major date movies.
“Valentine’s Day” is loaded with stars, including Julia Roberts, Ashton Kutcher, Jamie Foxx and Anne Hathaway. Taylor Swift even tries her hand at acting in this film.
Going into this movie, expectations were high with such big names. Unfortunately, those names were all the film had. The concurrent stories of love, loss and lust of seemingly unrelated lives worked for films like “Love Actually” and “He’s Just Not That Into You.” “Valentine’s Day” fell flat.
The dialogue was poor and none of the storylines were particularly strong or interesting. Some jokes were funny, and I will admit to laughing out loud a time or two, but several of the storylines seem exceptionally contrived and shallow as would be expected when trying to cover the lives of 20 people in two hours. “Valentine’s Day” probably will not become a Hollywood classic, but it was somewhat enjoyable, or at least, not miserable.
“Dear John” finally dethroned James Cameron’s “Avatar” as the number one film last week and maintained its top spot this week. “Dear John” is the complete opposite of the feel good romantic comedy “Valentine’s Day.” This movie is a total downer dealing with war, cancer, autism and loss.
Amanda Seyfried is a far better actress than I realized. Her performance as Savannah is actually quite powerful in this film, in contrast to her light-hearted roles in “Mamma Mia” and “Mean Girls.” She goes through the whole spectrum of emotion very fluidly in “Dear John.”
Normally, I don’t enjoy Channing Tatum as an actor, but he was also surprisingly enjoyable as John Tyree. Tatum’s character’s tumultuous relationship with his father was one of my favorite parts of the film.
While I’m normally a total cynic when it comes to Nicholas Sparks-inspired movies, I really appreciated “Dear John” and highly recommend it over “Valentine’s Day.”
