Valentines Day (garry Marshall, 2010)

Valentine's Day (Garry Marshall, 2010) is a comedy based upon the screenplay by Katherine Fugate, which follows the lives of a group of individuals, whose stories are full of romantic twists in the 21st century with several relationships that are explored (personal, professional, sexual, family) and all of them are connect by strings of "love". The audience watches how the media exudes its power as it influences and reinforces the importance of Valentines Day. Sex, relationships and love are viewed as a social construct but the movie challenges the audience to ponder upon the meaning of love.

The movie surrounds the many different relationships of the people in Los Angeles on Valentines Day, but focuses mainly on Reed Bennett (Ashton Kutcher). The story begins with Reed proposing to his girlfriend Morley Clarkson (Jessica Alba) just as she wakes up on Valentine's Day, she excitedly answers yes. When Reed informs Alfonso (George Lopez) and his best friend Julia Fitzpatrick (Jennifer Garner) of his girlfriend saying yes both are somewhat surprised yet happy. We are then introduced to Dr. Harrison Copeland (Patrick Dempsey) who is with Julia because they seem to be in some type of relationship. Our next couple, Jason (Topher Grace) and Liz (Anne Hathaway) wake up discussing their amazing sexual rendezvous, until Liz gets a phone call and abruptly leaves somewhat flustered. We then meet Sean Jackson (Eric Dane) who is an in the closet gay professional football player thinking about the end of his career. His publicist Kara (Jessica Biel) is anti-valentines day because she always finds herself alone on this day, she shares the same view as Kelvin Moore (Jamie Foxx) who is a news reporter, and they ironically end up falling for each other. We also meet a teenage couple thinking about having sexual relations for the first time, a much older couple where the wife tells the husband of an affair she has many years ago with her husband's business partner.

The movie concludes when we find out that Kara is not ready to get married and leaves Reed, Julia finds out about Dr. Harrison being married and goes to dinner that he is attending with his wife and acts as a waitress to try and subtly inform his wife, Jason and Liz reunite after he thought she was cheating on him when he heard her having a very intense phone conversation with someone else, it turned out she was an adult phone entertainer. We also find out later that Sean and Holden are lovers, the teenage couple do not end up having sex for the first time. The movie ends with Reed kissing his best friend Julia thus starting a new type of relationship between them.

The media has an interesting way of following us around. The media today penetrates our daily lives and affects our thought and reasoning processes. Anywhere and everywhere we look we are subject to some company promoting or selling their product influencing our decisions. The same idea is overtly evident in this movie because with the combination of media and power (companies) individuals succumb to their commercial adverts and buy-in to the day that is "Valentine's Day". The evidence is clear when we find hundreds upon thousands of people storming Reed's flower shop to purchase overpriced flowers to display their affection. The meaning of flowers on Valentine's Day acts as a display of love and affection. Reed not only promotes his store in a television interview, but also does so in such a sappy way, which convinces us that if we do not buy flowers for our loved ones, we are committing a huge social faux pas.

He describes love as being the most shocking act left on this planet, and therefore if you are not able to provide your loved one with that same type of reaction you essentially fail your "responsibility" on Valentine's