The Editor's Mess

I’m definitely not in love with Valentine’s Day.  I don’t think I’m alone in this.  I don’t have a special someone to bring me breakfast in bed, I don’t get a card, I’m not going out anywhere for any kind of romantic meal nor am I bringing any roses to it.  Just the way it goes. 

There are a couple of ways to take that: either I’m a damaged aberration, or this is more common than we’re led to believe.   I have my own theory.

In any case, it’s interesting to me that we celebrate Valentine’s Day and yet nobody really knows why we have such a holiday.  (Not a real holiday, mind you: everyone still has work.)  Catholics have different saints that could be the eponymous “Valentine,” and, ironically, all were horribly murdered.   The Roman Emperor Claudius Gothicus killed at least two of them by cutting off their heads.

Red roses indeed.

How Hallmark and Hollywood turned this disgusting bloodbath into anything so tepid and formulaic is another story.

Stranger still is how these storied martyrdoms morphed into a celebration of anything “romantic,” as if “romantic” meant a Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan movie and not a movement epitomized by Lord Byron and Shelley.  Personally, I think this was just simple appropriation.  Married people desperately needed a holiday to celebrate themselves, because, well, misery loves company, and Valentine’s Day is one of the most effective recruiting vehicles they have.  The origin was just an irrelevant hook to latch onto.

Thus: Valentine’s Day.

Anyway, here by way of a LONG introduction, is IRREVERENT’s Top 3 Worst Valentine’s Day Movies (2024 edition)!

1: Notting Hill (1999)

Baby Hugh Grant pulls several key muscle groups mugging and being charming in this highly improbable rom-com that fundamentally defined how to use tired muzak to score a film cobbled together from tired tropes.  [Hugh – loved you in The Gentlemen.]

Taking a cue from the previous year’s Meg Ryan hit, William Thacker (Grant) is another bookstore owner looking for love in all the wrong places, right up until a major international film star (Julia Roberts) randomly walks into his shop looking for Turkish travel books.  He fails to make the sale, but later ends up with her stripping naked in his dumpy apartment after he destroys her clothing.  For no reason she kisses him, and bingo, we’re off to the races!

Next up is a press-junket, where Thacker (Grant) impersonates a movie reviewer from “Horse and Hounds” magazine and ends up with a date with the infinitely famous Anna Scott (Roberts) to his baby sister’s birthday dinner party.  The party’s a charmingly British disaster (can we fight ANOTHER revolutionary war please?) but ends up with the couple breaking and entering a private garden in the middle of London to more muzak.  Charming!

Their next date is at a London restaurant, where some nearby toughs (within convenient hearing range) inexplicably begin deriding “actress Anna Scott,” while she sits a mere few feet away, apparently unknown to them.  This prompts baby Grant (Thacker) to spring into action telling them to consider her feelings, apropos of nothing, paving the way for Anna (Roberts) to swoop in and insult their penises.  Romance!

Eventually the couple ends up back at Anna Scott’s apartment, where jerk boyfriend Jeff King (baby Alec Baldwin) lies in wait to snatch back the famous actress from the jaws of some lame bookstore proprietor.

Back on his own, Thacker slogs through a series of terrible dates – the 9-5 job of singles everywhere – while he openly pines for “the American” (Roberts).  Then a porno scandal erupts with the famous Anna, and she (again inexplicably) rushes over to her favorite British person to strip naked in his apartment (again), take a bath, and sleep with him.

Now with less than 45 minutes left of the film, the cruel outside world comes knocking, the pair realize it’s hard having a relationship together when they come from two completely different worlds.  The pair sort-of break up.

That is until Anna comes back to London without telling him, and in no way wanting to see him.  His pal, however, lets him (Grant) know via the newspaper (like a stupid version of your phone’s newsfeed), prompting him to stalk her to the movie set.  Thanks to the sound-guy, he overhears Anna telling a co-worker that he (Grant) was an embarrassment.  Once again tired of being treated like shit, he bails.

So she stalks him, gives him an expensive piece of artwork, and in a fit of scenery digestion asks him “to love her.”  He says no.  Later, his friends convince him he’s an idiot (for not letting her continue to dick him around I guess?), he rushes off in a madcap romp (with more muzak!) through downtown London stalking her press conference, they embrace I’m sure, and ride happily into the sunset.   But I admit by this point I was Nodding Off on Notting Hill.  Love?! wins!!?!

2: You’ve Got Mail (1998)

Back when the internet was young, and so were Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, there was “You’ve Got Mail,” named after the annoying email announcement pioneered by AOL (America On-Line), which is how the internet worked before any of you were born.  It used “modems” (just Google it) and was so primitive that nobody used your personal information to try and sell you fake news and presidential candidates.

Joe Fox (Hanks) and Kathleen Kelly (Ryan) are both bookstore owners, which is a thing that used to exist before Amazon.  Fox (Hanks) works for a giant soulless corporation owned by his family, while Kathy owns a small, cozy indie store selling children’s books.  They meet – but don’t know it yet – online in a chat room, which was what we had before Reddit threads and 4chan.  Furthering the irony, they live suspiciously close to each other, but again, don’t know it because of the anonymity of the internet.  Back then the internet wasn’t something that had alienated everyone so much that you had to act out with Tik-Tok videos.

They’re both dating the “wrong person,” by which I mean they’re bored, and so they start exploring this brand-new way to cheat via email.  So most of the movie is voice-overs of our pair’s email chains.

They continue improbably bumping into each other in a city of millions, and independently doing cute things for a while.

Meanwhile, Joe Fox (Hanks) is proceeding to bankrupt every indie bookstore around thanks to the expansion of his family’s Fox Books Superstore chain, again just until Amazon wipes them off the planet.   Eventually this comes to include Ryan’s comfy “Shop Around the Corner,” which is a call-back to an old Jimmy Stewart movie of the same name.   (No, you can’t find a torrent for it.. just hit Amazon.)

Despite having a foot out the ol’ relationship door, Kathy exploits her boyfriend (Greg Kinnear) to write a newspaper article about how great her store is, which used to be called “a conflict of interest” before influencers made it cool.  In the ethics-free era of 1998 this worked great and drummed up all sorts of business for her store.  Within weeks she’s bankrupt and shutters the dump.

Meanwhile Hanks figures out that the person he’s been exchanging emails with is the same annoying indie store owner he’s been battling in the mean streets of New York, then uses this knowledge to yank Ryan around for the last half hour of the movie.  When they finally meet and his identity, and lies are revealed, paradoxically she doesn’t knee him in the gonads.  The music swells and the credits crawl, hurray!

All of this just goes to prove the old adage: falling in love with your partner’s online persona hardly ever ends up with your lifeless body being neatly sectioned and dumped in a nearby body of water via several hefty bags.

3: Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986)

Six years before People called him “the sexiest man alive,” Nick Nolte was a bullshitting Beverly Hills hobo intent on ruining Richard Dreyfus’ life in this lovable, dysfunctional family comedy.

Dave Whiteman (Dreyfus) is a rich clothing hanger manufacturer with sweet deals with major hotel chains worldwide.  The wealth has allowed his family to become incredibly screwed up, leading to dysfunction and misery.  One day, a depressed bum named Jerry (Nolte) shows up and attempts to kill himself by drowning in Whiteman’s pool, which Dave prevents.  Hilarity ensues!

First off, Dave’s gonna pretty-man-up our “sexiest man alive” via generous consumer spending, leading to Dave offering Jerry a job at one of his hanger factories.  Jerry turns it down flat.  Dave’s wife Barbera (Bette Midler), who can’t stand Jerry, watches him eat dog food then lets him give her a full body massage, along with full penetration, resulting in something close to orgasm for uptight Barb.  Jerry then decides to screw the maid, whom Dave is also screwing on the side, leading to jealousy for some reason. 

Looking for others to exploit, Jerry next sets his sights on befriending Max, Dave and Barb’s possibly transexual filmmaker son.  Then, just to complete the set, Jerry screws Dave’s daughter Jenny and confesses that all the stories he’s been spinning are bullshit.  Ain’t love grand?

In the end, after all the shenanigans, the Whiteman family embraces their ne'er-do-well con man because, after all, they love him… for some totally inexplicable reason.