3 July 2009 1:54 PM, PDT | Studio Briefing - Film News | See recent Studio Briefing - Film News news »
In an odd bit of scheduling, the comedy I Hate Valentine's Day is opening over the Independence Day holiday, and it's certainly clear that critics have no sweet Valentine's Day missives to dispatch to Nia Vardalos, the star of the film. ("She can expect to loathe Independence Day, too," writes Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News.) Claudia Puig in USA Today gives it her vote as worst movie of the year, pronouncing it a "clunky, unfunny and plodding mess." Since Vardalos is also the writer, director and star of the movie, she "gives new meaning to the term triple threat," comments Lou Lumenick in the New York Post, who remarks that he's "been to funerals that were a lot more fun" than this movie. Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times observes that Vardalos goes through the entire film smiling. "Nobody smiles that much," he says, "unless they suffer from the rare giocondaphobia, or Constantly Smiling Syndrome, a complaint more often seen among viewers of Rush Limbaugh and field hands in Gone With the Wind." "This is a film with a mission," writes Robert Abele in the Los Angeles Times. "Get to the grand-gesture climax without disturbing any clichés in its path." »
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