Anyone feel the need for a “War on Valentine’s Day?” The “War on Christmas” seems to be pretty popular these days. That having been said: I had to laugh at the preview. I will not be seeing the film but the premise is just so bad I can’t help wondering why this type of movie is so popular. I mean, why can’t all of these incredibly beautiful women find fulfilling relationships? I guess they must all be spastic/slutty or otherwise defective! Boy that’s a hoot! And don’t worry guys, there’s something for you too(apart from gorgeous women acting generally ridiculous). Some Latina(bitches are crazy, amirite?) beats up a dude on the street! She even knees him in the nuts(testicular damage is always good for a laugh just ask Bob Saget)! Now if we could just get a good fart joke in there . . . /S

Man, Garry got every pretty person in Hollywood to be in this thing. 

Too bad he’s still writing sit-com stuff that belongs on “Laverne & Shirley”—back in the 70s, that is, not some newly reimagined “Laverne & Shirley” where they are independent and awesome.

It’s like somebody took all the stalest, most worn-out romantic comedy tropes, mixed them up in a blender, drank it, and then threw the contents back up into a glass. The result was this trailer.

Um.  Is this a remake of “Love Actually”?  The lovesick cute little boy gives it away.  Checked Internet Movie Database, apparently it isn’t.

I had a writing teacher who pointed out to us that there are “detail realistic” stories (where we recognize the lives of the people on screen) and “emotionally realistic” stories (where the people in the story bear no resemblance to actual human lives, but we feel connected to their emotional journey).  This helps explain a lot of genre fiction, from action movies to romance novels.  But it does get a bit poisonous when people think that doing the things that people in romantic comedies (or porn movies or Tom Clancy novels) do will bring them the same emotional satisfaction that the characters in the story have.  And when it doesn’t - they blame feminism.

But remember, we do live in a world where “Meet the Spartans” and its ilk were box office hits.

Amy and I were talking about this the other evening, and Valentine’s Day is her second most loathed holiday, between Christmas and Thanksgiving (her dislike for Christmas has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with family expectations), for precisely the reasons you describe. It’s a holiday designed to make you feel like crap if you’re not hooked up, and if, like us, you have lots of single friends, you see them feel like crap every February as a result.

Our favorites—and I think this says a lot about us—are New Years Eve and Halloween, because they tend to be the anti-Christmas/Valentine’s/Thanksgiving, at least the way we celebrate them anyway.

The trailer is embarrassing, the movie is a cliche—but your post here is edging over into a kind of bitterness.

Amanda, now that you and your bf have moved to NYC, don’t even think of going out to a restaurant on Valentine’s Day. It is rubes night for the patrons, and almost all restaurants restrict you to fixed-price menus filled with cheap high-margin items. Also, because it is one of the busiest nights of the year, almost all restaurants are forced to hire temp kitchen and waitstaff who suck total balls.

PhysioWife and I always go out the day before or the day after VD.

Bradley cooper is so f’ing hot, when will he ever be in a decent film?  The only good thing he was ever in was the sadly short lived wb series, Jack and Bobby.

The trailer is embarrassing, the movie is a cliche—but your post here is edging over into a kind of bitterness.

Interesting diagnosis of my weak female brain.  What, precisely, do you believe I’m bitter about?  I’m curious.  Or do you just assume all women are bitter, because bitches are crazy?

Ah, Physio, we don’t “do” Valentine’s Day.  I realized that I’ve never actually had fun trying to celebrate it, because it robs romance of that needed sense of spontaneity.  Sure, most romantic spontaneity is an illusion, but it’s one that’s impossible to uphold on Valentine’s Day.  Plus, what Incertus said.

Angl, I hear you.  I think Topher Grace is awesome, and he’s looking fine now that he’s older and not gawky anymore, but I can’t think of a single thing he’s been in I actually want to see.

In fairness to the wildlife of youtube the PR people from whatever studio this leaked out of probably spammed the comments for their own trailer. Viral marketing etc. Anyone else notice this a lot more in the last 2 months? Incidentally Nike sports equipment is totally awesome and you should check out our new offers in the coming month.

In response to the trailer; ugh Ashton Kutcher is the fucking antichrist, “love is the last shocking act left on the planet”. For a brief moment I completely understood the satisfaction wingnuts take from the sound of automatic weapons fire while I simultaneously felt like getting sicking up a bit in my mouth

George Monbiot had a great (if horrifically depressing) piece on the way popular opinion about global warming is shifting toward denial.  I think shitty movies about relationships that are impossibly happy and fulfilling work on the same level, in that the more clearly evidence is presented to show you’re fucked, the harder you’re going to fantasize about (and then actually believe in) how great everything could be if only the people you hate would stop ruining everything.

I’m not writing this very well, but still, I think there’s something to that.

I send up a thank you to Fate every year that my son was born on Valentine’s Day, thus freeing my husband and me from having to do anything romantic on that day ever again. We’re busy at the zoo or playing paintball or whatever.

These movies are lowest common denominator stuff—no thinking required, just look at the pretty people and eat the snacks from the concession bar. I read a Roger Ebert review once where he said the problem with modern movies is that we are now forced to watch the same idiot plots from romantic comedies and musicals of the 1930s, only now they’re played seriously as if they were really deep and meaningful. At least back in the Depression years everyone knew this stuff was stupid.

I’m still boggled that Garry Marshall has so much power that he can cast all those super-pretty people. 

I imagine it must be a peer-pressure type deal where Garry got Hector Eliziando and called in a favor with Julia Roberts, who’s channeling “My Best Friend’s Wedding”.  Once Julia Roberts signed on, then Jessica Alba wanted to sign on, then Jessica Biehl couldn’t be left out ,and once that many pretty women were involved Ashton Kutcher wanted in and then Patrick Dempsey thought “I’d better use this hair while I’ve got it” and when McDreamy signed on, McSteamy had to sign on, and by then they needed Jamie Foxx so the cast was multiracial and so on.

This all despite the fact none had actually read a script…

Seriously?  There are multiple Oscar winners in this flick.  And it looks horrible.

I mean, why can’t all of these incredibly beautiful women find fulfilling relationships?

Not to mention the incredibly attractive men, but of course, men don’t want relationships because all we think about is sex, amirite, guys? Amirite?

The trailer is embarrassing, the movie is a cliche—but your post here is edging over into a kind of bitterness.

Yeah, Amanda. I think it’s because you’re one of them humorless feminists.

Wow, as if my seething hatred for the holiday wasn’t bad enough… Admittedly in my case I’m biased by perpetual singleness (defective personality), but apart from the fact that Vday gives big corporate behemoths an excuse to pretend they’re sex-positive, I could really do without it.

If it’s any consolation, Amanda, I think your humorless and bitter tendencies only exist for irony.

Sheesh, people, get a grip: someone thinks something crappy looks crappy.  If that’s bitterness, then I’m the most bitter person on the planet, since almost all entertainment looks like crap.  That was Black Eyed Peas’ worst song in the trailer, and if that isn’t damning with damnation itself, then I don’t know what is.

I’m still waiting to find out what I’m bitter about, besides how stupid other people can be.  But I suspect that’s not the “bitterness” he’s talking about, because no one uses the word “bitter” in that context.  It’s usually a word used to put women in their place when they complain about sexist romantic tropes.

Seriously, the inclusion of the Black Eyed Peas made me wonder if this movie is a big joke on us, an attempt to make the biggest piece of shit on the planet and, if it pulls down a profit, Garry Marshall wins that bar bet with Michael Bay.

Man, Garry got every pretty person in Hollywood to be in this thing.

Yeah I pretty much figured that’s why they made it. I’ve been noticing lately there seems to be an awful lot of fan service in romantic comedies.

“You must be bitter” = argumentum ad psychologicam. See also “You must not be very happy with your life” or “You must be a miserable person.” Frequently uttered by the intellectually shallow and those who are threatened by any display of negativity. And, yes, it is frequently bound up with sexism and other prejudices, because “how dare those uppity ____ harsh my squee by pointing out that my entertainment isn’t very entertaining for them!”

No. I re-read it. I’d say the same thing if it were written by a man.

I’ve just spent five minutes of my life wondering how one designs the rubric to determine which of the Black Eyed Peas’ songs is the worst.

Bradley cooper is so f’ing hot, when will he ever be in a decent film?  The only good thing he was ever in was the sadly short lived wb series, Jack and Bobby.

He’s sort of becoming the male version of Katherine Heigl.  Like her, he seems like someone who has a lot of potential, but pretty much every film he’s in is this sort of crap.

“You must be bitter” = argumentum ad psychologicam. See also “You must not be very happy with your life” or “You must be a miserable person.” Frequently uttered by the intellectually shallow and those who are threatened by any display of negativity.

Also, “you must be a loser and have no life if you are commenting on a blog post”.

She’s just bitter.  A lot of chicks are.  You know how many times I’ve been called that?  If you’re a woman and you open your mouth, some guy somewhere smells something “bitter” about you.

Misanthropic is an apt description.  I never cease to be amazed by people finding entertainment in movies and TV shows that insult them and portray their entire gender in flat, simplistic stereotypes.  Even more shocking is how effectively they make people feel inadequate.  For not being a cardboard cutout movie or sticom character!

No good ever comes of reading the YouTube comments.  Ever.

That said, to judge by the trailer, saying that this movie will suck monkey balls will have monkeys everywhere clutching themselves protectively.

Insofar as the rating for a bad trailer on YouTube is concerned, a video merely has to exist just to get four stars. Anything rated less probably involves insulting babies and kicking puppies…maybe.

Amanda wrote:

You’d think that since most people have intimate knowledge of what it’s like to be single or coupled (and most of us have knowledge of both), they would be able to see right through this dishonest drivel.

I know that I was single, once, but it was too far in the past for me to remember it!

I didn’t see the trailer as noticeably worse than the trailers for other movies of whatever genre you’d want to call it—romantic comedy, I assume—but, watching it seated at the computer desk might somehow be different than in an overly air-conditioned house of pain.  (Have I mentioned that I really don’t like going to the movies?)  But it sure didn’t inspire me to jump up and yell, “Elaine, we have to go see this!” either.

Pf course, I do have a pet peeve about Jessica Alba as a blonde.  Yeah, she had to be to play Sue Storm in Fantastic Four,  and she’s gorgeous, but she’s just wrong as a blonde.  (I wonder if her as a bleached blonde ever got Oliver Willis over his Jessica Alba obsession?)

I’d say the same thing if it were written by a man.

Suuuuuuuure you would. Because that’s the easy peasy stereotype….oh wait, it’s not. 

What am I bitter about, Dr. Garuda?  You still haven’t said. Is it because saying it out loud will prove that you resorted to a misogynist stereotype promoted by movies like this?

Garry Marshall may not hate humanity but he probably likes making money.  I’m seeing a parralel here between the way Eric Schlosser described the “genius” (if you want to call it that) of the fast food industry.  The pioneers of the fast food industry new that when on the road looking for a place to eat what people wanted was reliability and predictability (in the arts, such things are called cliches).  And that’s what you get at every McDonalds, the exact same hamburger.  the exact same fries.  Not great stuff, but you know exactly what you’re getting.  Hey, Hollywood is a business, and contrary to the myth of the heroic entrepreneur, most businessmen don’t like risks and innovation.  They like a sure box office draw. 

Saying a movie is cliche ridden is an insult to some people and is a big selling point to other people who would rather have a predictably mediocre movie rather than go to see something that they didn’t like and feel like they wasted $15 and two hours. 

Or to borrow a line from Shakespeare in Love, “Love and a bit with a dog.  That’s what they want.”

Hey, that scene where the guy gets kneed in the groin, was that a homage to Mike Judge’s “Idiocracy”?  In the future, every movie will have an “Ow, my balls” moment.

I would add too that there appear to be a lot of big name stars in this movie.  Which means they had to fork over a lot of money.  Which means the producers would practically insist on “Romeo and Ethel the Pirates’ Daughter”.

I’ve just spent five minutes of my life wondering how one designs the rubric to determine which of the Black Eyed Peas’ songs is the worst.

It’s whichever Blackeyed Peas song you are listening to at that moment, failing that, which ever one is in your head.

Kyso:  I suppose that means that I’ll never know which Black Eyed Peas song is the worst.

What it really looks like to me is Friends.  And the same people I knew in college that got together on Thursday nights to watch Friends are the same people who can’t wait to see this movie.  They’re the same people who are unaware that the Black Eyed Peas suck.

I was suprised to also like Love Actually, when I really did not expect to.  This?  Couldn’t pay me to watch it, not unless I could sleep through it and was really tired.

In the future, every movie will have an “Ow, my balls” moment.

They managed to work one into the Jim Carrey version of A Christmas Carol and were proud enough of it that they used the shot in the previews so, yeah.

As long as we’re doing viral marketing for our employers, may I recommend The Princess and the Frog, which I can guarantee has no “ow, my balls” moment?

The only redeeming facet of Marshall’s long career in sitcoms was his portrayal of a casino manager in Albert Brooks’ Lost in America—having lost “the nest egg” gambling, Brooks tries to persuade Marshall to give it back.

Since Mr. Bitter won’t explain his comments, I’ll explain mine:

The way to determine which Black Eyed Peas song is the worst is done by first measuring the parts.  First, does it have a crappy video that does nothing other than reiterate the song?  Does the song reiterate the song itself?  Does it have the robot voice thing?  Does the video also carefully focus on Fergie’s body, which reiterates a previous attack on songwriting?  Does this pretty much prove that this one-note band is getting louder and louder with each remix—I mean each new song they put out?

If the answer is in any way less than Hell No, you are listening to the worst song by the Black Eyed Peas, even if you are a fan.

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One thing I can’t stand is the Stealth RomCom. At least this movie has the decency to declare upfront that it’s an obnoxious POS movie about the redemptive power of Twue Wuv.

I tend to be very stubborn about watching movies: there’s always something I’d rather do (either game- or food-related), and I suspect part of this is because I’m so sick of sitting down to a movie that I *think* is going to be deeper and more complex than a simple RomCom and it turns into a boilerplate RomCom.

And it’s not that I have anything against boilerplate RomComs, I just don’t like being tricked.

I agree this is probably not a great movie.  But its opening in February.  Here in the north the fun newness of winter is waaaaay over, the hope of spring isn’t even on the horizon, and every day is gray, gray, gray.  So if there is a movie filled with pretty people doing non-violent things that don’t tax my brain, bring it.

What it really looks like to me is Friends.  And the same people I knew in college that got together on Thursday nights to watch Friends are the same people who can’t wait to see this movie.  They’re the same people who are unaware that the Black Eyed Peas suck

A big YES to all of the above. I hated Friends, I think that Jennifer Aniston is a overrated actor, and there are no words to decribe how much I dislike Julia Roberts and her stupid laugh, and piss poor acting. Same for the two Jessicas, and Ashton Kutcher. He was the least funny character in That 70’s Show.
I laughed my ass off when I saw a picture of Fergie with urine stained shorts at a gig. Plus the annoying way she goes on and ON about how much she wants a baby. Who cares? And as someone suggested up thread War on Valentine’s Day would be wonderful. I need to watch a Rammstein video stat to clear my mind of that trailer now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SoW5-tLe-U
Here’s a Valentine Day story. The original fairy tale was about a priest who climbed a mountain to fetch a red rose for the village girl he fell in love with. He ends up falling to his death.
In this charming version, he kills her parents to show his love for her. Then the villagers burn him alive.:D More my kind of story.  I think this version was banned in Germany. The priest is the lead singer of Rammstein. *swoon*

People really got together to watch Friends?  God, that’s as pathetic as the people who did it for Seinfeld.  By that, I mean really fucking pathetic.  Shows about almost nothing at all that go on forever numbing the collective society’s brains. 
I like Matt Perry and Jessica Alba.

Hey, getting together to watch crap TV is super-cheap and can be really fun, especially when you all live in the same building.  I have many happy memories of yelling at Grey’s Anatomy or America’s Next Top Model.

Anyway, Seinfeld was way better than Friends.

We don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day, because it would interfere with our anniversary, which is in February (we’re not decided on an actual date first meeting was pre-VD, first date was after, split the difference, make the entire month a holiday).

BTW, love IS one of the last shocking things in this society, however what this crap movie is showing isn’t love, it’s a commodification. Hearing Kutchner saying it is a vile blasphemy, and having that saying tied into this bullshit movie demeans it.

No matter how crass or irritating this is, it can’t possibly be worse than Love Actually (which it’s transparently based on).

I found LA so trite that it ended up being funny; probably not the intention.
We saw Sherlock Holmes this week.  This movie was previewed.  Yep, reinforced that I would not ever think of seeing it, not even on tv for free.

Clearly a throwback to the good old days of Seventies Hollywood, where all-star casts struggled to figure out how to handle enormous disasters unfolding all around them.

I think not celebrating Valentine’s Day because it makes romance non-spontaneous is like not celebrating Christmas because all that peace on earth stuff should be true year ‘round.  You kind of acknowledge that yeah, the feeling ought to be felt throughout the whole year, but it’s still nice to have a day that focuses on it.  I have good and bad VDay memories, but one of my dearest is how my Dad would always get me a heart-shaped candy box.  After he and Mom snowbirded to Vegas every winter he’d save it for me in the fridge and give it to me when they returned, and this continued for the rest of his life.  He’d bought one for me three years ago which he never got to give me because he was killed a month later.

Some of us who put our own meanings on rituals like to use specific dates to mark them.  I may light candles for my Dad when the mood strikes me instead of on designated yahrzeit days, but I also like the buildups to the holidays, how the preparations for the harvest festival are still so tied to the season, stuff like that.  And I’m also a romantic when it comes to my escapist literature or entertainment.  I know it’s fiction, but I’ve found that for me fiction can be whatever I want it to be without it much damaging my second-wave feminist views.

None of this is to say I have any interest in this particular movie, but in general, I don’t mind screen romances.  I’ll always be addicted to old Hollywood musicals.

The trailer is embarrassing, the movie is a cliche—but your post here is edging over into a kind of bitterness.

If you don’t like pop culture telling you how to live your life, if you don’t like generic stories telling you how to feel about your own real-life personal relationships, then you’re just a bitter person who needs to open your heart to pop culture.