Jennifer Garner & Jessica Biel

Set in a sprawling, grime-free L.A., director Garry Marshall's "Valentine's Day" is "Crash" with hearts and flowers, an ensemble romantic comedy that believes in bulk.

Its makers have already announced plans for a sequel to be called "New Year's Eve," which -- if it comes to pass, meaning if "Valentine's Day" does "Love, Actually" business -- will reunite Marshall with screenwriter Katherine Fugate.

Is "Valentine's Day" good?

Not really, though plenty of the actors are. The crisscrossing, oh-she's-related-to-him! narratives make "The Longest Day" look like a chamber piece.

One: Ashton Kutcher proposes to Jessica Alba. Two: Kutcher's best friend, Jennifer Garner, has a divorced boyfriend, Patrick Dempsey, who is in fact married, though Garner doesn't know it, and Kutcher, a florist, does. Three: One of schoolteacher Garner's fifth-grade students, Bryce Robinson, is living with his grandparents, Hector Elizondo and Shirley MacLaine, who undergo a crisis of trust.

Four: Jamie Foxx is a TV sports newscaster dragged into V-day coverage, though he's more interested in following the story of pro football quarterback Eric Dane, whose public relations agent is a Valentine's Day-hating lonely heart, played by Jessica Biel. (I suppose it's possible.) Five: On a plane heading to LAX, Julia Roberts, an active-duty Army captain, shares banter with business hotshot Bradley Cooper.

Deep breath, and ...six: Anne Hathaway and Topher Grace are two weeks into a relationship, but she hasn't told him that she moonlights as a phone-sex operator, a secret she's also keeping from her boss, Queen Latifah. I mean, who isn't in this movie? It's easier to tell you who is: singer-songwriter-album-of-the-year-er Taylor Swift as a ditzy high school student going out with Taylor Lautner of "The Twilight Saga: New Moon." Swift's confidante is Emma Roberts (Julia's niece, a cast standout, natural and easy). Kathy Bates turns up as Foxx's TV producer, the one who sends him out on V-day assignment with the exhortation: "I need happy. I need romantic. I need love." I've got just the movie for her.

"Valentine's Day" comes with a sprint-to-the-airport-before-true-love-boards-her-flight sequence, thank God, and in sum it plays like 12 landlocked episodes of "The Love Boat" rammed together, though without the same rate of intercourse. We are, after all, re-entering a more conservative age, a fact that the makers of this sunny, synthetic affair acknowledge in at least half of its 448 separate plotlines.

 

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"Valentine's Day" Movie Trailer

 

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MPAA rating: PG-13 (for some sexual material and brief partial nudity).

Running time: 2:05.

Cast: Jessica Alba (Morley); Jessica Biel (Kara); Bradley Cooper (Holden); Eric Dane (Sean); Hector Elizondo (Edgar); Jamie Foxx (Kelvin); Jennifer Garner (Julia); Topher Grace (Jason); Anne Hathaway (Liz); Ashton Kutcher (Reed); Queen Latifah (Paula); Shirley MacLaine (Estelle); Emma Roberts (Grace); Julia Roberts (Capt. Hazeltine).

Credits: Directed by Garry Marshall; written by Katherine Fugate; produced by Mike Karz and Wayne Rice. A New Line Cinema release.