Mister Softee

A-ha! Got ya.

From the title, you probably thought this was a misplaced entry into my weekly Sunday Memory Drawer. All about the ice cream truck and that annoying song.

Wrong.

This is just my way of offering an explanation and perhaps even an apology. Because, folks, I meandered into a theater playing "Valentine's Day." Yes, that "Valentine's Day." Yes, the same movie that was allegedly booed at an industry screening. Yes, the same movie that was given the grade of "F" by Entertainment Weekly.

Not only did I see it...

I liked it. Call me...

Mister Softee.

Actually, ice cream is a good metaphor to use in this film review. Okay, there are those isolated moments in life where you crave a gooey hot fudge sundae. All the things that are bad for you. Loaded with calories and not a single nutritional value attached. But, you want the exhileration of that hot fudge sundae. Even though it can kill you. Even though your stomach will ache thirty minutes later. Screw it all. Make mine with chocolate chip ice cream, please.

That, my trusted readers, is "Valentine's Day."

Everybody should know walking in what is in store. This is a Garry Marshall film, for Pete's sake. Except maybe for "Pretty Woman," Garry's never been known for making anything but heaping spoonfuls of cinematic Velveeta. Here, he tries to do an American edition of the wonderful "Love, Actually," one of my truly favorite movies. You know he's not going to achieve that level of British class. But, still, you're in there rooting for him. Garry's a nice guy. I've met him. I've had the experience of peeing next to him about five or six times. He's a goofy dude from the Bronx. What's not to like? Go see the movie. Maybe you'll laugh. Maybe you'll cry. And, most likely, you'll forget about it as soon as you're in the car on the way home.

I knew all that. I expected all that. And that's probably why I don't feel like I wasted my time. In reality, I felt a helluva lot better after "Valentine's Day" than I did after seeing the dreary and hopelessly overhyped "Avatar." As Garry might say, go figure.

Even as I describe the events of "Valentine's Day," it's going to sound like a putrid mess. It's one of those movies where you need a GPS to figure out which character is which. Everybody is disconnected in the first hour, but you know they will all come together in the second hour. And then you'll curse yourself repeatedly for not seeing the obvious links that wouldn't even have eluded Helen Keller.

"Valentine's Day" spins around florist Ashton Kutcher who may run the only flower shop in Los Angeles because every single person in this movie winds up there at one point or another. Well, anyway, Kutcher has just proposed marriage to girlfriend Jessica Alba on what will be his busiest day of the year. Which day is that? Valentine's Day, of course.

Kutcher's best galpal is Jennifer Garner, who is dating Patrick Dempsey, who is really married to a character played by some actress who doesn't make the list of twenty actors listed in the opening credits. Jennifer doesn't know he is hitched, so you know there is heartache right around her corner.

But, wait, there's more. Jamie Foxx is a sports reporter hanging with PR agent Jessica Biel whose client is Brett Favre knock-off Eric Dane whose agent is Queen Latifah. As you can tell, the script for "Valentine's Day" is a complete run-on sentence.

But, wait, there's more. Topher Grace works in the mailroom for Latifah's agency and his girlfriend is Anne Hathaway who secretly works as a phone sex operator. Shirley MacLaine and Hector Elizondo, who Marshall uses in so many films that I'm convinced they go together to the Ralph's supermarket every week, are babysitting some ten-year-old boy who may or may not be attached to somebody else in the cast. Ah, wait, they're his grandparents. I finally figured that out halfway through the movie.

But, wait, there's more. Bradley Cooper and Julia Roberts are strangers sitting together on a fourteen hour flight into LAX. Why fourteen hours? The script needed a reason to keep them away from all the other cast members so you can't figure out how they fit into the rest of the story. Meanwhile, the two airhead Taylors of Hollywood, Lautner and Swift, are high schoolers (????) who do nothing but swallow buckets of each other's saliva. Their story is so disconnected from everything else that I kept thinking it was from a trailer for Garry Marshall's next movie. Actually, I'm sure it was a trailer for Garry Marshall's next movie.

All of these folks come together sort of in the last third of the movie. Some things start to make sense. Some things remain as mysterious as the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. But, still...

I was having a good time.

Garry makes the film more fun by interjecting a bunch of in jokes and I might have missed half of them. Two car service drivers are holding up cards for their passengers "Madison" and "Unger." Shirley MacLaine plays a retired actress and one of her old movies plays on a wall at a Hollywood cemetery. And, of course, it's really a Shirley MacLaine old movie. And, as her car whizzes by the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Julia Roberts has a line referencing the fact that "Pretty Woman" was shot there.

Almost mystically, there were some plot twists in the last fifteen minutes that caught me by surprise and actually pleased me. And the final resolution of the Julia Roberts story brought a tear to my eye. That and my self-discovery that I now have a crush on Jennifer Garner and absolutely despise her real-life beau/lummox Ben Affleck.

Make any sense? Make no sense? What can I tell you? I like a good hot fudge sundae.

Call me Mister Softee.

Dinner last night: Meat loaf, macaroni & cheese, and broccoli.