| Valentine Released: 2001 MPAA Rating: R Genre: Slasher Nuts and Bolts: Jeremy Melton wants to get revenge on all of the little whores that wouldn’t dance with him at the Junior High Valentine’s day dance. Donning the face of a cherub, Jeremy assumes a NEW identity and stalks his prey. The TRUE face of the killer will shock and amaze you! (Yeah right.) Summary: Aww Christ, do I have to do this? Just thinking about this lame-ass movie is enough to induce seizure. Oh well. Be that as it may, I will endeavor to make the summary a tad more interesting and provocative than the movie itself. (Which shouldn’t be too much of a challenge.) We begin with a flashback to the year 1988. We are at Robert F Kennedy Junior High School and it is the night of the Valentine’s Day dance. A little buck-toothed nerd named Jeremy Melton is trying desperately to score. He asks four different Ho’s-in-training to dance with him. Their names are Kate Davies, Paige Prescott, Lily Voight and Shelly Fisher. They all basically tell him to fuck off and Jeremy walks away. He finds an overweight girl named Dorothy Wheeler sitting on the bleachers by herself. He asks her to dance and Dorothy is so surprised that someone even condescended to speak with her that she agrees. (This chick has REAL self-esteem issues.) After dancing for a bit the two decide to sneak underneath the bleachers to make out. Jeremy doesn’t even get two fingers up the girl’s skirt before a group of jocks finds them and begins harassing them. Dorothy would rather be dead than be caught swapping saliva with this geek so she tells everyone that Jeremy attacked her. The jocks go Carrie all over the little geek and dump a bowl of punch over his head. Then they drag him out onto the dance floor and proceed to kick the snot out of him. So endeth the flashback. Thirteen years later we find Shelly Fisher (One of Jeremy’s tormentors) on a date. She is with a complete fucking jackass named Jason Marquette who can’t seem to speak without talking in the third person. Who is this guy, the incredible fucking Hulk? Anyway, the date goes sour and Shelly returns to the med labs on the college campus where she works. While getting ready to carve up a cadaver named Chad, Shelly finds a Valentine’s Day card. Opening it up, she finds a death threat worded within the couplet of a Valentine’s greeting. She goes back to her lab where the killer known as the Cherub is waiting. This goofball wears all black clothing and sports a plastic mask made to look like Cupid. Shelly tries to hide by slipping into an unoccupied body bag. (Christ what a dumb bitch.) Cherub unzips the back and runs a sharpened silver blade across her throat. As he looks down upon her body, a stream of blood begins to pour from his nose. The following day we find Paige Prescott and Kate Davies going to some weird Californian dating service. They interview with a few losers who represent every baseline stereotype ever established for a single libidinous male. Leaving the scene the two learn the shocking news of their big-boobied friend’s death. Now we cut to Shelly’s funeral where we meet the rest of our star-studded cast. We meet Paige’s roommate Lily who is played by the same dizzy blonde bitch from Urban Legends: Final Cut. Then there is Kate’s boyfriend Adam Carr. Adam is actually just David Boreanaz taking a day off from shooting an episode of Angel. Kate and Adam drone on about Adam’s drinking problem. And just as the viewer begins to nod off to the soothing sounds of Boreanaz’ droning voice, in walks Detective Leon Vaughn. Vaughn is the tough-talking, middle-aged, balding (But not ashamed to admit it) go-getter type who decides to interview all of Shelly’s friends. He passes around his business card and asks people to give him a ring if they learn anything about the murder. (Don’t you just love these cops? Too damned friggin’ lazy to do the legwork themselves, they rely on others to do their investigating for them. And then they have the nerve to get indignant when someone doesn’t reveal as much information as he would have liked! Yes, this actually happens later on.) A few days later we see Paige and her dumb blonde bimbo roommate sitting around their apartment. Lily gets the mail and finds a Valentine’s day card and a box of chocolates. She’s not sure who the candy is actually for, but this ho don’t care. She rips the box open anyway and like a ravenous weasel tears into the candy. Much to her surprise (and my personal delight) the chocolates are filled with wriggling squirming MAGGOTS! She spits the crap out onto the floor and then reads the card. It’s another ‘Rose are Red’ themed death threat signed by someone named JM. (The less attentive people reading this review may come to realize that the little geek in the beginning was named Jeremy Melton. Shelly’s date Jason Marquette also fits the acronym. Oooh…a MYSTERY is afoot! Quick, call Mulder and Scully! Christ.) Anyway, the scene is quickly forgotten and we now move onto Kate. Kate is taking a shower in her apartment. The water craps out and the poor girl is forced to rinse the shampoo out by dunking her melon into the toilet! Skank. (Okay, I admit it. I actually liked this part.) Kate goes to phone the super when she sees that her front door is open. (Hmmm…now who on EARTH might have access to Kate’s apartment? I think we’re gonna need our Captain Midnight decoder rings to figure this one out folks.) With towel firmly wrapped around her flat-chested body Kate peers out into the hall. She hears a strange sound coming from the elevator. She goes to check it out and finds a weird plastic cherub mask lodged between the doors. This is where we meet Kate’s freaky neighbor Gary. Like Jason Marquette, Gary too likes to masturbate on the English language. Conversing with Kate, every line out of his mouth is in the form of a rhyme. (Wait a minute! Gary speaks in rhymes. There were rhymes on the Valentine’s Day cards. I think I’m on to something here guys.) Now we move on to Dorothy Wheeler. (Remember her? She was the one who was two fingers away from a good shagging back in 88.) Over the past thirteen years, Dorothy has dumped about eighty pounds and has died her hair blonde. She is also filthy fucking steenking rich and lives in a BIG-ASS mansion. An old friend of Dorothy’s named Campbell Morris arrives at her door begging for a place to stay. Dorothy is wet for the guy and immediately gives him a room. Campbell is a gold digger and could really give a fuck whether Dorothy likes him or not. So now we move onto Lily’s weirdo boyfriend Max. Max is an artiste who hosts this bohemian film gallery. Paige, Kate, Dorothy, Adam and Campbell all attend and even that fruitcake Jason Marquette shows up. Lily and Max get into a fight later on and Lily storms off. While wandering through a maze of video monitors beckoning her to “Love me”, the Cherub arrives. Now this guy’s no Green Arrow but I gotta admit, he’s a pretty good shot with a bow and arrow. Three quick shots later, and Lily’s dumb ass is propelled out a window into a garbage dumpster. Cherub’s nose begins bleeding again. The next day Dorothy confesses to her friends that she lied about Jeremy attacking her in Junior High. They all go down to the police station to talk with Detective Vaughn. They discuss the possibilities that Melton may be the killer. After everyone leaves, Vaughn tries to put the moves on Paige. Paige (surprisingly) turns him down though. While all this is going on, we find that Kate’s goofy neighbor Gary has snuck into her apartment to try on her panties. Cherub enters the room and whoops the shit out of him with a hot iron. Hey, that’s the least he could do right? But don’t worry, he gets rid of the freak’s body so that Kate doesn’t stumble upon it. (But what ultimately happens to Kate’s bloomers I wonder? Hmmm.) The following night, Dorothy prepares for her big-ass Valentine’s Day party. Campbell and she bump uglies and Dorothy goes to take a shower. The hot water craps out and she asks Campbell to go relight the pilot in the boiler. He goes down into the basement where the Cherub is waiting. Cupid never brandished an axe but this guy seems to wield it quite expertly. He buries it between Campbell’s shoulder blades and the guy falls over dead. No big loss really. The guy was a dick. That night the party is on! Again, the entire cast shows up. One of the losers from Turbo-dating arrives and tries to romance Paige. They go upstairs and he indiscriminately asks her for a blow job. Paige probably would have given in if the guy weren’t such a total turd about the whole thing. Instead, she ties him down to the bed and pours hot candle wax all over his pecker. (In fact, I think that guy is still up there.) After a few more unpleasant incidents, Paige decides to chill out in the Jacuzzi. In comes the Cherub. He pushes her down into the water and closes the lid. Paige scrambles about trying to escape and the killer begins drilling holes into the thing with a power drill that was conviently left lying around. Before long, he finally manages to nail her and the water turns red with blood. He chucks the drill into the tub and lets the law of physics (as well as electricity) do the rest. Thank God, I really didn’t like this bitch at all. Thanks to Paige’s demise, the power in the house craps out and everyone leaves. The only ones left are Adam, Dorothy, Kate, and Brian the candle wax man. (Which means ONE of them MUST be the killer eh?) Kate gets into an argument with Dorothy and runs outside. She finds Detective Vaughn’s head floating in a fountain. Next to it is a note that belonged to her boyfriend Adam. (Could it be Adam?) Kate runs back into the house convinced that Adam is the killer. But apparently Adam has been down in the wine cellar getting shit-faced. Poor guy fell off the wagon. Adam and she talk back and forth and he appears to attack her. But is he REALLY attacking her or it just the aggressive tendencies of a drunk man in love? You decide. The two chase each other all around the house. SPOILER WARNING: THE TRUE IDENTITY OF THE KILLER WILL SOON BE REVEALED! Finally, Kate begins to run upstairs when she runs smack-dab into….the CHERUB! The Cherub falls upon her and the two tumble down the staircase. Both smash onto the floor and the Cherub appears to be knocked unconscious. (Hmmm. But where is Adam?) Kate pants and breathes heavily before picking herself up. Just as she does so, the Cherub rises. But before the killer can do anything else, Adam appears at the top of the staircase and plugs the Cherub with seven shots from a pistol. (What? The killer is NOT Adam? Why who could it be?) Kate pulls the mask off the corpse revealing the face of……………….suspenseful pause……………DOROTHY WHEELER! (Who woulda thunk it?) Kate breaks down and Adam caresses her in a loving embrace. A drop of blood begins spilling out of his nose. Acting/Dialogue: The acting is fairly unimpressive in this. The only one who does a halfway decent job is Jessica Capshaw (Daughter of Kate Capshaw). I gotta admit, she was pretty kick-ass.David Boreanaz may have changed his name, but don’t be fooled. It’s actually Angel that we are watching. The only non-Angel segment he has is when he starts chuckling over a joke mentioned at Shelly’s funeral. Talk about a guy with zero range. He should just stick to the vampire flicks. He’s more convincing in the roll of a dead stiff than he is as an actual breathing human being. Gore: There’s a little bit of gore, but most of it is rather boring. Ruthie Walker has a pretty cool death as Cherub crunches her throat down onto some shards of broken glass. Other than that, it’s your typical slashed-throat affair. (Unless you count chronic nose bleeds.) Guilty Pleasures: Katherine Heigl shows off her cleavage and Denise Richards’ skeletal ass is seen flopping around in a bikini. (Christ, if you’re going to show someone in a bikini at least make sure that they weigh at least 25 lbs. Is that too much to ask?) We also see some extremely brief nudity during Max’s video art gallery exhibit.Th-th-th-th-that’s all folks! The Good: I like the whole nose bleeding thing. It doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense, but I think every serial killer should have a particular trademark. The only up side to this misery is that the killer gets away with it. And I don’t mean that he gets shot five or six times and then disappears after the surviving victim’s face is turned. No, I mean he 100% accomplishes what he set out to do and gets away with it scott free! Well done. The only downside to that is that I’m sure we’re going to see this monkey-piss spawn a sequel. I can see the tagline now. “Roses are red. Violets are blue. If the first one didn’t kill you, then check out Part 2!” I thought it was appropriate that Dorothy would leave this world accused of a crime she never actually committed; an adequate revenge from a guy who was kicked out of Junior High for something that he never did. The death of Paige Prescott was interesting albeit predictable. In the 1988 flashback, little Paige tells Jeremy that she would rather be put in a tub of boiling water than dance with him. Right there, you know how this bitch is going to die. It’s just a shame that it took an hour or so for us to see it. Now here we have David Boreanaz, who is more widely known for playing a character by the name of Angel. Angel is basically a bloke with a drinking problem that runs around town in dark clothing beating people up. In Valentine, we have Adam Carr; a bloke with a drinking problem running around town in dark clothing killing people while wearing a mask in the shape of a cherub. Not quite ironic enough to merit inclusion in a song by Alanis Morrisette, but just quirky enough to invoke a gregarious eyebrow raising. I gotta admit, I thought the poster art for Valentine was pretty fucking cool. They went with a stylistic approach as opposed to the celebrity head shot montage that is so prevalent in today’s teen-slasher flicks. The soundtrack is pretty cool too. It has a nice blend of suspenseful music scores mingled with some modern techno stuff. The Bad: I really found this movie to be long, boring and uninspired. There is not a single shred of originality to be culled from this other than the fact that it is the only mainstream slasher flick that centers on Valentine’s Day. How this ever got into the theaters is beyond me. This should have gone straight-to-toilet. Uhhh…err…I mean…straight-to-video. Sorry. As I watch this movie I can almost hear a classroom full of monkeys sitting at desks tapping away at the keyboard churning out this script. The dialogue is so insufferably weak that you can actually SEE the actors’ reluctance to execute their lines. The pacing starts off okay, but invariably becomes very slow. Halfway through the film we find ourselves screaming at the TV, “Just kill her already would ya? I gotta take a shit!” Although taking a dump would probably be more engaging than watching this mess. This movie succeeds in being UN-predictable by virtue of the fact that’s its so predictable. They pretty much telegraph from the onset that David Boreanaz is the killer. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Cherub is at least six-foot three and Boreanaz is the only actor in the cast that even comes close to that height. So immediately I’m set to thinking, “Okay, its not him. That would be too obvious.” Boy was I wrong. Hell, even the CHARACTERS knew who the killer was! What makes this so triumphantly sad is that the director actually intended the identity of the killer to be a surprise. He honestly fucking thought that we wouldn’t be able to figure it out! Director Jamie Blanks more or less reveals this on the audio commentary on the DVD. He explains how they tried to keep the news of the killer’s identity from leaking to the internet moguls. This arrogant presumption not only INSULTS our intelligence, it grabs it with both hands and breaks it across its knee! You see kiddies, this is what happens when we let music composers direct movies. Throughout the course of the film, the producers drop little hints here and there alluding to the fact that so-and-so may be the killer. They really need to brush up on their Agatha Christie however, because none of these really succeed in making us suspect that any of these clowns (Except for Boreanaz) is anything but a straight-out loser. They even make Dorothy look suspicious when she starts freaking out towards the end. Sorry, but that dog don’t hunt. There are too many scenes where we see the killer in one room while Dorothy is CLEARLY in a different location. Jason Marquette is suspected of being the killer, but this is also too obvious. He’s just too fucking goofy to be a murderer. They also show us Kate’s cross-dressing neighbor Gary. Again, this clown is way too aloof to be the true murderer. Besides, I’m sure Warner Brothers would have activist groups jumping all OVER the place if the producers decided to portray the drag queen as being anything but a normal decent mentally stable member of society. It’s bad enough we frown on guys who wear women’s knickers, we don’t need to be making him a serial killer to boot. And last but not least, there’s the obvious Carrie rip-off. In the prologue of the film we see little Jeremy Melton getting a bowl full of red fruit-punch poured over top of him by some pricks in the bleachers. This scene is so reminiscent of the pigs-blood scene from Carrie that it ought to be outlawed. At least Banks had the decency to admit that this was in poor taste and should have been cut from the film. (Why it was ever filmed to begin with is beyond me.) Great Lines: “Well, what are you waiting for honey? Wax it!” --Brian Lowell using his super suave techniques to try and convince Denise Richards to give him a BJ. “How about a date, Kate?” --Freaky neighbor Gary Taylor who always speaks in rhymes. “Well the problem is you turned out to be a cheap hypocritical sleaze ball!” “Yeah, but you knew that.” --Lily yelling at her boyfriend Max. “I don’t want you to do something tonight that’s going to get written off as a weak moment tomorrow.” --Adam Carr “Okay fine, he’s no angel, but he’s no murderer.” –Kate defending Adam to Dorothy. I like this one because of the Angel comment. Overall Rating: 3 broken hearts out of 10. |
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