At first sight Garry Marshall's all-star ensemble looks to be a Short Cuts-lite – Short Cutlets, if you will – until it establishes its tone of flabby sentimentality and you realise it's more like an LA version of Love, Actually. There's even a sickeningly precocious kid who declares his love to an adult.
Try to hang on to your lunch. Set over a single Valentine's day, it forms loose interconnections between people you couldn't care less about – Jessica Biel and Jamie Foxx as sports agent and reporter are the most dismal, Anne Hathaway as a phone-sex worker is the most annoying, Eric Dane as a gay football star is the most wooden – and then spins them out to excruciating length. Bradley Cooper and Julia Roberts almost alone emerge in credit with a flirty little encounter on a plane, but even they are let down by Katherine Fugate's insufferably twee script.
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