As you'll recall, He's Just Not That Into You — aggressively marketed toward women and released right around the advertising-driven fauxliday known as Valentine's Day — made upwards of $94 million. So the executives at New Line decided to milk the conceit — chicks love love, after all — and greenlight another film devised to separate women from their money by slapping some big-name celebs (Julia Roberts, Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Garner, Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper and Shirley MacLaine) on a story that supposedly tugs at the heart.

On March 11, before I'd read the script for Valentine's Day, I wrote:

I can already guess that one woman, who you think will stay single, will suddenly find a date; one woman, who you think will have a date, will suddenly be single; and one couple will remain together despite going through a dilemma that should tear them apart.

I was right!

Truthfully, VD is not terrible. But: It's not sweepingly epic enough to be truly romantic, and there aren't tons of jokes, so, much like He's Just Not That Into You, it's technically not a romcom. They are similar in that the movie consists of supershort scenes from each of the ensemble cast's day; a device successful in Love, Actually but more shallow and less charming here. The script is written by Katherine Fugate, whose TV credits include Army Wives, and Xena: Warrior Princess.

The entire movie takes place in one day, and follows different people — a teenage girl intent on losing her virginity; a 30something guy who's just proposed; 20-something coworkers who've just hooked up; a still-blissfully-in-love couple in their 70s, among others — and shows what happens to them on the magical day known as Valentine's Day.

Explains one character — the guy who's just gotten engaged: "Today I can be the kind of cheeseball who tells random people at the ATM about it because it's Valentine's Day and people are all about love today." (This statement is uttered while driving in a van, and immediately after, a "road rager" yells, "Will you use your freakin turn signal you freaking pansy?" Hence: "Comedy.")

Other problems: There's a kid whose character seems so similar to the little boy in Love, Actually, that it was distracting. The guy who's just gotten engaged works at a flower shop, where all of the employees underneath him seem to be extremely stereotypical Latino clichés. One character, a reporter, goes around interviewing people about Valentine's Day, and encounters an 18-year-old girl identified in the script only as a "petite round CHOLA." She, naturally, has liquid liner and utters these words:

CHOLA:
I was hot like jalapena, sexing him
up whenever he wanted. I would
have done anything for that vato,
but still he whored around.

When I read these words, I cringed. Are there Mexican-American girls in L.A. who talk like this? Maybe. But does Hollywood have to perpetuate this cliché on screen?

It was also pretty depressing to read the successful, single woman in the script say:

I haven't had a date on Valentine's
day in almost 10 years. I mean -
it's mostly by choice. I put all
my energy into this job, into
taking care of my clients - and I
know I don't put myself out there
at all - but still - 10 years.
Isn't that pathetic?

The thing that I hate most about
this day - honestly - is that I'm
embarrassed. I'm embarrassed that
it makes me feel as bad about being
alone as it does.

I mean, the character has a point, and these feelings are valid — but isn't naming your script Valentine's Day and releasing it in time for Valentine's Day — and making it a "romcom" in which everybody has happy endings just compounding the issue? What if Valentine's Day were about a band of single women who tried to take down the commercial holiday through renegade street art and guerilla acts of crafty drugstore terrorism? Hmm?

To its credit, VD has (gasp!) a black character in it. Not just a black person, a BLACK MAN. And unlike HJNTIY, there's a nice range of ages, proving that life after 30 exists. In addition, whichever comic moments seem a little flat on the page may be energized with some great direction and acting.

That said, the script was incredibly predictable — considering I called most of the plot "twists" before I'd even read it. True, this is a draft. Things change. But even more frustrating is the notion that because I'm a woman, this is what I want for Valentine's Day.

Earlier: Valentine's Day: What He's Just Not That Into You Hath Wrought

The executives at New Line Cinema can't wait to take more hard-earned cash from women who don't care about storyline and just want to see something about dating and love — again!

That's why there is a project in the works called Valentine's Day. It will hit theaters right before — wait for it — Valentine's Day, 2010. The plot? The plot is iffy. Something about "would-be romantics working their way through a tangle of circumstances in L.A." But that doesn't matter, because Julia Roberts, Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Garner, Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel and Shirley MacLaine will be in it. And Bradley Cooper. New Line will come up with a way to work a story around these people, since all that matters is that there's money to be made. Apparently, He's Just Not That Into You proved that women want to go see "romantic" movies — with other women or a date — right around Valentine's Day.

I have nothing against romance, comedies, or romcoms. I love stuff like When Harry Met Sally, Flirting, and Amelie — thoughtful films with strong writing and characters who are forces of nature. But He's Just Not That Into You — a movie based on a self-help book based on a catchphrase from a TV show — lacked substance and soul; the characters might have well have been cardboard cut-outs with labels like "The Optimist" or "The Seductress" taped to them. And for every bad review, there was a person who said, "I'm gonna see it anyway." Now the studio has 94 million reasons to pull that shit again.

As I wrote earlier this year, when you go see a movie like He's Just Not That Into You, you're casting a vote, telling Hollywood you want more flicks in the same vein. And this is what HJNTIY's box office bonanza hath wrought: Valentine's Day. As a former screenwriting major, it is painful to read that this project is being dictated by a calendar date — along with a cast and director (Garry Marshall) — and not by an actual story someone was inspired to write.

Who knows? Maybe there will be some surprises! Maybe they'll change the title to Single Awareness Day. Maybe some great writer (writers, plural, probably) will be hired by the studio to come up with a perfectly charming Valentine's Day tale. (I can already guess that one woman, who you think will stay single, will suddenly find a date; one woman, who you think will have a date, will suddenly be single; and one couple will remain together despite going through a dilemma that should tear them apart.) But for now, I'm already announcing that I'm just not that into it.

Hollywood Has Feb. 14 Circled in Red [NY Times]

Earlier: Liveblogging He's Just Not That Into You
Cliché-Laden Chick Flick Tries To Convince You It's Not Full Of Clichés
He's Just Not That Into You: Gay Minstrel Show?
More Reasons Not To Get Into He's Just Not That Into You
He's Just Not That Into You - First Review
There's No Way You'll Be Into He's Just Not That Into You

It's some sort of "plot point" in the film that Bradley Cooper's cheating husband is also lying about having quit smoking. His wife, Jennifer Connelly, (um, spoiler alert?) eventually leaves him. Not because of the cheating, because of the smoking. She writes a note for him that says "I want a divorce" and then tacks it onto a carton of bright yellow American Spirit Lights (mmm...) So though the message is totally anti-smoking, the AMA thinks it's shameful of the film to use an actual brand-name cigarette, and demands to know whether or not Warner Bros. received any product placement monies.

They claim that some 200,000 kids start smoking every year, because they're influenced by characters who smoke, in movies like Frozen River and I've Loved You So Long. Though really, what youths are going to see this thing? Wee scarf-clad Gideon and his bestie Tamara? Lonely Lois and her bucket of popcorn? The kind of teened agers who would go see this film probably should start smoking, at least then they'd seem cool and maybe make some friends.

Really, though, the AMA is right. There's no reason to put brand-name cigarettes in the movie. It adds some verité perhaps. But we are, again, talking about a movie whose thesis is that the unendingly complex communications between people can be boiled down to something like "men are mean, and women are shrill and lonely." So.

Don't go see this movie. It might make you start smoking! (Though, sadly, not in an after-sex kinda way.)

1. He's Just Not That Into You — $27.465 million
There was every reason to believe Into You would connect with audiences: The zeitgeisty line of Sex and the City dialogue had already been spun off into a popular self-help book, talk show, weight loss plan, Israeli martial art, and library cataloging system. Surely the Hollywood movie—a star-studded ensemble comedy examining tribulations of dating in a technosavvy age full of crossed wires and mixed-messages—was destined to be just as successful. Now there's no stopping America's single women, newly empowered by the awareness of their own undesirability. You go, girl-not-worthy-of-being-that-into!

2. Taken — $20.3 million
A puny 18% drop from its first week suggests male audiences sought some quality mantertainment that didn't portray them as either bumbling idiots (Pink Panther, Blart), shallow, affection-withholding brutes (Into You), or unrealistically hunky renegades who could send shockwaves out of their palms (The Wrestler). That left the paternal vigilantism of Taken, a movie whose lack of Harrison Ford in the lead we still can't completely wrap our minds around.

3. Coraline — $16.335 million
This macabre and visually stunning Hansel and Gretle-ish tale appealed to adults as much as it did to the kiddie set, and deservedly so. If you're a fan of The Nightmare Before Christmas, or the art of Edward Gorey, or are even the least bit curious as to what a colony of Scottish Terrier bats might look like flying at you in 3-D, we highly recommend it.

4. The Pink Panther 2 — $12 million
5. Paul Blart: Mall Cop — $11 million
Unfortunately, the bad Pink Panther omen proved correct. Face it, Steve Martin: Clouseau should have been left under glass. If we want to see an incompetent, moustachioed crimefighter face plant into a fountain, we'll call Blart.

6. Push — $10.204 million
We've already seen some confusion regarding the two Pushes, with at least one box office chart listing Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire instead of this Push by mistake. Though the more we think about it, the former Push's incestuously knocked-up Precious could really have benefited from the ability to psychically explode all the blood vessels in her father and evil mother Mo'nique's bodies. The only power she came equipped with, however, was superhuman perseverance in the face of unimaginable adversity. You go, Precious! We're that into you!

• BOM: Feb 6-8

WHAT'S NEW: It looked for a moment like the aging He's Just Not That Into You had done in New Line's climate-controlled film cellar might have punched up its all-star romcom flavor. Yet as taste test results pour in, we're learning that might have been a little too premature an assumption. Not premature, however: The expectation that the Barrymore/ScarJo/Aniston/Affleck confection will win the weekend, wringing around $22.6 million of date-night loot and safely distancing itself from The Pink Panther 2's $16.8 million. Look for the stop-motion fantasy Coraline to present the weekend's big 3-D X-factor on 2,200 screens, pulling enough viewers from the top-two openers — as well as holdovers Taken and Paul Blart: Mall Cop — en route to a surprising, Focus-satisfying $11.2 million.

Also opening: Darth Weinstein's own shelf-dust Fanboys; the Lysistrata-ian, Soviet-era sex-for-water comedy Absurdistan; and the much-anticipated Thai martial-arts offering Chocolate, about a "special-needs girl with a special need to kick some ass." We can't make it up, we swear.

THE BIG LOSER: We suppose Summit Entertainment had to follow its blockbuster Twilight with something, but we had hoped it wouldn't be yet another grim, garish confirmation of the B-flick factory the studio actually is. Yet here comes Push, the psychic actioner pairing Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning as a telekinetic and a clairvoyant trolling Hong Kong for some experimental drug that, should it fall into the wrong hands (namely Djimon Hounsou's), would wreak some global havoc. Like, say, a sequel. We love noshing on some delicious junk now and then, but since we get the feeling that even Summit itself would hesitate to lick the frosting off this particular cupcake — and with Chocolate calling our names anyway — we'll pass. As will the rest of America; see you at $7 million and on Flopz™ by June.

THE UNDERDOG: Face it: This is a make-or-break year for you and your Oscar pool. Seventeen wins won't cut it anymore. Luckily, Magnolia Pictures is pulling for you, offering this year's Oscar-Nominated Short Films as a means of sharpening your competitive advantage in at least two categories. Add in the extra benefit of all of them being generally good (a few are outstanding, including Pixar's Presto, pictured), and really, there's no excuse to say "No." We'll offer our own handicapping guide later today, but clear a couple hours this weekend to judge for yourself.

FOR SHUT-INS: A sparse week of new DVD releases includes Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, a two-disc edition of Zack and Miri Make a Porno, the good Dakota Fanning alternative The Secret Life of Bees, "deluxe" reissues of the first three Friday the 13th films, and the indispenable-to-somebody Becker: Season Two.

While most discriminating critics have yet to weigh in on the film, thus avoiding a Bride Wars-esque review wasteland ahead of this Friday's wide release, one trade reporter offers this qualified recommendation — and even backhanded praise! — after last night's premiere:

[It] could easily have become the latest syrupy Hollywood romantic comedy. Instead the Ken Kwapis pic turns into a wide-ranging and noble (if, in the end, a failed) meditation on fidelity, daughterhood and the meaning of (female) happiness (and a slightly relentless vehicle for product placement). [...]

Several female friends we talked to were delighted by all the usual grace notes but slightly taken aback by, as one called it, "slightly dark." Indeed, for all its Sex and the City pretensions (it's based on a book by SATC writers, and New Line moved it to '09 to avoid bumping up against its Carrie-esque stablemate) this is a movie that at times has more in common with European arthouse relationship movies [...] than it does many Jennifer Lopez/Sandra Bullock studio confections.

Even the guys are somewhat multidimensional, the writer adds, indirectly implying that the long HJITIY delay may have just been some executives' ploy for cosmic balance upon learning the degree to which they'd emasculated Matthew McConaughey in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. No problem, New Line, we're even.

• He's just that into European romantic dramas [Risky Biz Blog]

Johansson's rendition of "Last Goodbye" graces the soundtrack of He's Just Not That Into You, where we imagine it might double as internal monologue when Johansson's yoga instructor moons over the emotionally noncommittal Bradley Cooper during a sad montage furnished by Pottery Barn. From the sounds of it, the actress has moved on from Tom Waits and is now channeling the tremulous Joanna Newsom; fortunately, we have inside word that Johansson's biological progenitor —the "very nice (not damn sexy), most important - CHRISTIAN young lady" the actress was cloned from—is still sticking to the Michael W. Smith songbook.

• Scarlett Johansson Covers Jeff Buckley [Stereogum]

The cinematic events which apparently heralded this sea change were Sex and the City: the Movie, Twilight, and Mamma Mia. In other words, women had promiscuous sex, had sex in the city, and didn't have sex with vampires, and amidst financial turmoil and political change, we ate it up.

However, all this is positively Bergman-esque compared to 2009's distaff-themed offerings. Says the FT,

This year women will be targeted even more precisely. One sub-sub-genre to emerge is feature films adapted from self-help books, notably French Women Don't Get Fat, which instructs women they can stay slim while still scoffing the air in the éclair choux pastry, and He's Just Not that Into You , which proffers advice such as that if a man runs away from a woman he is not in love with her.

The article quotes one feminist's dismayed response to this trend: "Self-help books send out the message women need to improve themselves instead of being happy with who they are." Well, that seems a tad unfair. For one thing, as self-help books go, these two are fairly common-sensical: both were remarkably short of psychco-babble and long on clearing up misconceptions, albeit obvious ones. There's a reason these books were such runaway bestsellers that they caught Hollywood's roving eye, and it's more than just numbers. Self-help offends people by its lack of artifice, its vulgarity, but chick lit and women's fiction hews to a similar formula of control-wresting and triumph. After all, a film like Sex and the City or Mamma Mia is no more virtuous for wrapping its self-help cliche's in shoes and ABBA; the self-help films will simply make no bones about it. The irony is, the end result will probably not be too different from what Hollywood's already turning out.

However, it will be interesting to note whether the stigmas of self-help carry over to its cinemazation. After all, a woman who can justify seeing Sex and the City for a laugh or Twilight in the name of cultural anthropology - no small class of women, I'd wager - might have a harder time pulling the trigger for French Women Don't Get Fat in widescreen. We like to be silly, not to feel stupid. Whether or not one finds the self-help film trend dismaying in itself, one can't deny that the "woman/smart " divide is being made nakedly stark. In removing all the artifice from what have essentially been self-help movies all along, Hollywood's ironically respecting our intelligence. And I wonder if that might not, also ironically, result in a backlash of denial - not the kind of escapism anyone wants.

Year of Women [FT]

"There are times I don’t even remember that particular show. This is horrible to say, but there are times when I laugh my rear end off," she says. "And I get in debates with people who are over and say, 'Friends' is not my thing.' Excuse you!"

Kinda bitchy, John Mayer! Let Jen crack up to "The One Where Chandler's Weight Fluctuated Wildly" — where's the harm?

• Jen Aniston Wishes New Movie Was Called "She's Just Not That Into You" [Us]

According to the weekly, it was none other than controversy-free Jennifer Connelly:

"Connelly… will not be included in an upcoming cover shoot for Marie Claire magazine that will feature Aniston… and her other co-stars from the October comedy, Drew Barrymore and Ginnifer Goodwin. 'Word is, Aniston threatened to pull out if Jennifer was part of the cover.'"

Though we suspect Johansson would have been the target of Aniston's venom had she been free for the shoot, we're more than a little surprised to hear Connelly received the wrath (and the boot) from the other Jennifer. While Barrymore met her own boy toy Justin Long on set and Ginnifer's still dating Katie Holmes' leftovers, these two are unmarried just like Aniston. Connelly's been married for centuries in Hollywood time, and has kids to prove it. Which, of course, makes perfect sense on second thought. If Aniston wasn't going to "hit it off" with one of the movie's other leading ladies, it would have to be the sole hitched actress. We suspect Connelly's ejection had less to do with personality clashes than Aniston's desire to appear like a Barrymore/Goodwin peer, all single and tan and carefree, rather than part of the mature woman's yin to the young gal's yang.

[Photo credits: Wireimage, Getty, FilmMagic]

• JENNIFER ANISTON AND JENNIFER CONNELLY HAVING OFF-SCREEN FEUD [Celebritique]