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Jessica Alba and Ashton Kutcher are on the long list of good-looking stars in "Valentine's Day," a series of love stories set in Los Angeles.

Jason Pratt

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How obvious is "Valentine's Day?" Well, just take the scene in which a teenage boy approaches his girlfriend's house to have sex for the first time in either of their lives.

The song on the soundtrack at that time: Foreigner's "Feels Like the First Time."

OK, so you're not going to "Valentine's Day" to be surprised or challenged, that's clear. And it's glittery and sweet and star-laden enough that it'll suffice for mainstream audiences, for a couple of weekends at least. Young ones, in particular, might be drawn to the Taylor (Swift)-Taylor (Lautner) connection (report card: she's ditzy and clumsy; he keeps his shirt on, but makes a joke about taking it off).

But I'd be stunned if people in future years clutch this movie to their hearts, as many still do with "Love Actually," which this would like to remind you of. "Valentine's Day" is just too clumsy and breezy to inspire such devotion.

It's a case of too many stars and too many stories, only one of which has a surprise ending (and a pretty good one at that).

Sure, there are some tart lines mixed with the schmaltz. And it's certainly easy on the eyes, with a supersized collection of pretty stars. All these gorgeous characters spend Valentine's Day around L.A. crashing into each other just like in "Crash," without the racism and stuff but with hearts and flowers instead.

They all busily go through a long day's journey into night to make sure they meet their deserved romantic fate (a happy one for the good guys, not so good for the others) by the stroke of midnight.

Who knew Valentine's Day was such a big deal to Angelenos? Early in the movie, Jamie Foxx, as a TV sports-news guy, has a moment of sense, complaining that what's the big deal about Feb. 14? We don't even get the day off. Yet even he is eventually swept away by the tsunami of love that's swamps the City of Angels on this day.

Some of those stuck in its path, collecting paychecks: Ashton Kutcher as a sensitive florist in pink who, nonetheless, will go from Jessica Alba to Jennifer Garner in one day.

Jessica Biel as a Valentine's Day hater who somehow can't get a date (no, the movie's not science-fiction).

Patrick Dempsey as a two-timing doctor who's too handsome for his good.

Hunky Eric Dane ("Grey's Anatomy") as a pro football quarterback who's happy to take his shirt off, though "Twilight's" Lautner won't.

Bradley Cooper (from "The Hangover") as a nice guy on a plane who chats up a returning soldier played by Julia Roberts (who's returning a favor here to her "Pretty Woman" director Garry Marshall).

Then there's Topher Grace as an Indiana transplant dismayed that his new girlfriend, Anne Hathaway, is an "adult phone entertainer" who breaks off a romantic dinner to take a call. It seems a bit churlish of him: Valentine's Day, as she tells him, is "the busiest day of the year for phone sex."

The things you learn from the movies!

2 hours, 5 minutes. PG-13. A little cussing, some mild sexual material.