VALENTINE review

Wow... That sucked.

Ya know, when I saw the trailers for VALENTINE, I thought.... hmmm, 7 ft Cherub in all black with a butcher knife... I've got to see this.... Then I saw Denise Richards and Marley Shelton and thought... ewww... cool eye candy.

Then when I got to the theater tonight and I saw the special 'full disclosure' poster by Warner Brothers that warns us viewers in big type that we should be aware of the RATING of this movie. R.... and that the MPAA issued it for: STRONG HORROR VIOLENCE, SOME SEXUALITY AND LANGUAGE.

Hmmm, alright... cool, there's gonna be some T&A and tons and tons of good ol fashioned slasher film gore.

NOPE!

I wonder how much Warner Brothers had to pay or twist the MPAA into giving VALENTINE an R-rating. It certainly feels like a weak PG-13. The movie hasn't a single jump scare... no suspense or fear. Sure there are deaths, but in every single case you see: Instrument of their death..... The Victim.... The Cherub Killer..... Movement towards death instrument, cut away with loud sound effect.

Nudity? Zippo. Sexuality? There is a scene of a girl wrapped in a towel so tightly you can see NO cleavage or asscheeks. There is a scene of a couple laying in bed together, covers pulled up to under their chins, and completely nowhere near touching one another. Oh... there is some kissing while fully clothed in public places with closed mouths. Oh and there is one girl in a hot tub in a bikini... But that is like soooooo PG 13.

Where's the Sexuality in that? I mean are the MPAA so repressed that the above paragraph contains the ingredients that would form the word SEXUALITY in your rating.

OH... LANGUAGE. Ok, so the word PENIS is used. And "You've had guys who's last names you didn't know in your pants!" Ya know... I don't believe the words Shit or Fuck were ever used. And this was like COMPLETELY lame. LAME LAME LAME...

Alright.... So now that you know the MPAA rating was a sham, let's move on to the movie itself.

Ok, so you have 6 ft to 7 ft CHERUB stalking and killing a group of women. Now, as is the case with all 6ft-7ft Stalking Slasher Characters in films... they have a calling card of some sort to denote their style as a sicko killer. In this case we get VALENTINE CARDS. Early on, 3 characters get these, then apparently the 6ft-7ft Cherub Killer runs out of card ideas and ceases to give them to people. Now, I believe that the author of this film simply couldn't think of more than three cute death Valentine ideas.

Now, in addition... the first girl gets killed the way her Valentine card depicts... But apparently the Cherub Killer decided this would be too hard to keep up with the second death, so he dropped this concept.

Ok, so then the Cherub Killer loses focus on his/her original plot of killing this set of women and decides to just kill random other people, because they realized there was a lot of down time in the script so they had to add some bodies somehow.

Meanwhile the typical Scooby Doo plot of "Who Done It" comes into play. And the film decides to go into mystery mode, except that noone is bothering to actually try to discover the identity of the killer.

Ok, then we decide to create the artificial girlfriend strife thing, by having some of the girls angry with each other. Then there is the ludicrous, "Your boyfriend is doing this" "No Your Boyfriend is doing this" "That's not fair, take that back" "No You take it back" plotline.

You know the rule of a Slasher film that "If you have sex or do something morally wrong according to the Baptist that you will get killed" rule?

Well, here they decide to not only keep that rule... but amplify it so that you despise all of the women as man-hating manipulative monsters deserving of vicious deaths. They actually attempt to justify the killer's motives by making the women truly awful people. THIS IS ASTOUNDING. As a result, they fill the film with unlikable characters that deserve nothing more than death. As the film transforms from a slasher film, to a film about killing all women that make it hard to get in their pants or that have independent thought or are afraid of going too far and trying new things sexually.

Then on top of it all the film is just hidieously BORING and PEDESTRIAN.

To compare this to the best slasher film of all time would be an insult... so instead I won't even mention that film... Rather, I'll compare this to PROM NIGHT and STUFF STEPHANIE IN THE INCINERATOR... Ok, take out all gratuitous gore... take out all unintentional humor.... take out all nudity... add a score that sounds like a car whose ignition will never kick in and just groans on and on and on... And you begin to vaguely get a concept for where this TERRIBLE FREAKIN MOVIE LEFT ME.

This was not a cheap movie. Some idiot somewhere approved this thing, spent several million dollars on it and then didn't even have the courage to make a film in the genre that they were shitting in.

NOW... Somehow there are people writing me with positive reviews... I can not believe these are human beings that genuinely felt that... but if they are... PLEASE by all means rent STUFF STEPHANIE IN THE INCINERATOR.... because while that movie was excruciatingly awful... it was not the boring non-film that this so-called VALENTINE is.

This non-film was directed by Jamie Blanks, the fella responsible for URBAN LEGENDS... now in comparison to this, that film was a work of genius.... and that was not the case!

DO NOT BOTHER! You will most likely leave ANGRY. If you do see it and actually like it.... then I seriously believe you need to rush to a video store and begin renting everything in the Horror category because you definitely need perspective. THIS MOVIE IS LIKE WATCHING PAINT DRY FROM THE INSIDE OF A CAR ON A 120 DEGREE DAY IN AUGUST WITH THE WINDOWS ROLLED UP!

BEWARE!

Alright, you folks want some additional thoughts... gotcha... Ok how about this. This movie is a SLASHER film, it never aspired to be anything else. In that genre... THE SLASHER FILM GENRE, there are a series of items you need in order to succeed in the genre... You have babes with serious T&A.... You have original and creative and spectacular death moments... and you have the way in which the killer stalks, hunts and kills his/her prey.

Here the killer is a random inserted thing... The victims all unlikable characters, who are fated for nothing but death... and the 'style' of the killer is completely inconsistent and unfocused.

Now the SLASHER genre is not... by nature... a great genre. We have very very few GREAT slasher films.... PSYCHO, HALLOWEEN, BLACK CHRISTMAS and EYES OF A STRANGER. All of which have genuine scares, thrills and chills... Wonderfully creepy and scary SLASHERS.... Strong music.... Characters that you care about and don't deserve to die... and the babes are in fact BABES that show a little.... Hell at least in PSYCHO you were IN THE SHOWER with Janet Leigh, and while everything was shot tastefully... it was creepy and scary.

In VALENTINE... You care about NOONE... meaning that you can't really wait for them to die... but then when they die... it's so quick and so pointless that you can't wait to get out of the theater. Meanwhile the grating fucking music is so terrible that you begin to feel a migraine pour on and the theater begins to become intrinsicly more interesting... the glow of the exit sign.... the number of speakers on the sides of the walls... The bald spot on that guy three rows up that reflects the light of the screen in a strange irridescent manner... possible oil use?

This movie is complete DRECK.... in the genre of BAD SLASHER films, the T&A and GORE is all there is.... so this film... which is in the BAD SLASHER film genre doesn't even have that.... meaning that nobody in their right mind can love this film as even a pleasing distraction. Utterly worthless to all.