Director Garry Marshall struck it big with Pretty Woman and since then rom-coms have been a forte of his. He makes a big deal here of Valentine's Day and almost equates to Christmas or Thanksgiving.

Valentine's Day is his Robert Altman moment. An array of Hollywood stars criss crossing on the most romantic day of the year. There are literally a dozen or so plot lines in the mix here and all of them not very good and some actors are literally wasted such as Kathy Bates who appears in two scenes.

Jamie Foxx is a second tier sports commentator trying to find that big story rather than care for human interest stories who falls for Jessica Biel, a publicist for an over the hill football star whose agent is Queen Latifah.

Ashton Kutcher is a romantic florist on the busiest day of the year but his fiancée Jessica Alba is having cold feet and he realises the right woman for him could be his best friend Jennifer Garner a school teacher who is having a fling with a doctor who she later realises is married.

Shirley MacLaine is a 1950s starlet married for 50 years to Hector Elizondo but confesses to him of a past betrayal. Their grandson has a first crush and wants Kutcher to deliver a special bouquet for Valentines Day.

Bradley Cooper and Julia Roberts are sitting next to each other on a long distance flight, she is a soldier taking leave to get home to spend a few hours with someone special. They seem to get on well and flirt a little but who does Cooper really care for?

Anne Hathaway has got a new job working for Queen Latifah but she moonlights as a phone sex operator and just started a relationship with Topher Grace.

There are also plot lines featuring Taylor Swift, Taylor Lautner and Emma Roberts which is as tedious as Hathaway talking sexy every five minutes when the phone goes off wherever she is at work, at home or in a restaurant.

I liked the young kid bothering Kutcher for the delivery of his roses but you can guess who he really had a crush on. The Roberts/Cooper strand was intriguing and interesting especially as the air hostess also had the hots for Cooper as well. The Hathaway phone sex story just sucked and the other plot lines aroused little interest in me.

This is a film that needed to be tighter, more funnier and the stories more interesting. It actually also needed to be more romantic.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this film, but I watched it anyway, because I like a lot of the people in the cast. My overall thoughts on Valentine's Day was that it wasn't terrible but it was very uneven and I do have to agree with anyone who says Love Actually did it better, it did.

Starting off with Valentine's Day, it does have a great cast. Jennifer Garner and Anne Hathaway especially are very charming, and I liked the little boy who had a crush on Garner. It was also really nice to see Hector Elizondo and Shirley McLaine again, same with Patrick Dempsey and I also thought Taylor Swift was delightfully ditzy in her debut. I didn't mind Julia Roberts either, however the only ones I didn't like so much were Jessica Alba, who doesn't have that much to do and Taylor Lautner who was rather bland, and it seemed ironic that his character didn't want to take his shirt off, when in New Moon(horrible film by the way) Lautner spends most of the time with it off. Asides from the cast, Valentine's Day was nicely filmed and had a lovely soundtrack. And I thought several of the stories worked, especially Garner's.

However, I wasn't completely sure about the phone sex idea and Eric Dane's story is painfully underdeveloped. The script also has its weak spots with nothing really sticking out in the mind, in fact there were only a few amusing moments as the film is more bittersweet than funny, particularly the one in the restaurant with the conversation about the pig's meal. The film also drags badly, while the direction isn't quite as focused as it would have liked.

Overall, it isn't terrible, but it is very uneven. Worth seeing once or twice, but it isn't a movie for me that is to watch every day of the week. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Director Garry Marshall brings us an intertwining series of love stories in Los Angeles on Valentine's Day. They're mostly inoffensive sugar coated superficial stories. And then there are the Taylors, Taylor Swift and Taylor Lautner. They're trying to be the comic relief. I'm not sure why Garry Marshall thought they would be good at comedy. At least they stand out in this A-list lovefest. One of these are not like the others. Their complete ignorance and their oddity has its own charm. They're somewhat funny in one scene being interview by a news reporter.

It's a mess of too many characters in too many stories. After the first two or three plot lines, the rest starts becoming one big confused mishmash. I couldn't tell you what half of their stories are. And they just keep adding more characters. It's an avalanche of hot acting talents.