valentine

“fluffy” as it may seem, i have to admit that i enjoyed the lost valentine. it was like watching a maalaala mo kaya episode and if pinoy romcoms are like this, i won’t mind seeing one.

according to imdb, this movie is about lucas thomas's grandmother, caroline (betty white), who returns every valentine's day to the station where, at their then first wedding anniversary, she waved off to the pacific war theatre in 1944 naval pilot neil, officially still missing in action. lucas (sean faris), a former baseball star and reputable physiotherapist about to publish, tells the story to a station manager, who assigns the item to susan allison (jennifer love hewitt). susan gets involved and befriends caroline, but resists her crush on lucas on account of an already soulless engagement with international reporter andrew hawthorne. caroline's mild cardiac crisis seems to ruin everything.

susan was then assigned to another story as caroline was recuperating. from susan’s story on a US senator, she was able to track down the last moments of neil thomas’ life, from his posting in the philippines, to his heroic act of letting a wounded comrade take his turn to be salvaged and to his death after shielding a filipino boy from the japanese enemies. neil was then awarded a posthumous medal of honor, brought back to the US and were reunited with caroline after more than 60 years.

not so good points? of course, the manner how susan was able to achieve such a feat was all too ideal. there were also scenes that were highly unlikely such as the rose suddenly flowering towards the end of the movie. moreover, the sub-story on susan and lucas’ love angle could have been shortened. although there was some level of chemistry between hewitt and faris, the movie could have been more successful if it focused on what did caroline do between the day when she found out that neil was missing and 1990s perhaps. jennifer love hewitt’s susan seemed to be just longing and falling for a younger guy rather than being actually sunk in a not-really meaningless relationship. it being parallel to caroline and neil’s love affair just paled in comparison.

love stories and most stories wrought by world war II are always sad, dark and wholly depressing. but this one did not feel like it. white’s caroline represented a section of the society that did not question god why the war had to happen. instead, she kept hope in her heart, toughed out the loneliness of not knowing what really happened to her husband, regretted nothing and went on with her life. for this alone, i liked the movie already. central to this would be the fact that they got betty white (nominated in the SAG awards for best actress in miniseries) to play caroline, who was truly effective in this role. she beamed with inner glow even in her twilight years. the flashbacks of the 40s era and the war itself were also good. 

it was a good (could have even better of course) feel-good film.