I had a lot of fun drawing Tom’s wild mood swings in today’s comic. Always fun to do a little cartoon-y over exaggeration.

Cami and I didn’t see Valentine’s Day over the weekend and our lives were no less the richer for it. But I must admit that I was surprised by it’s $52 million haul at the box office.

This goes back to what I was talking about on Friday. I think people were pre-disposed to seeing this movie by virtue of it’s branding. They felt compelled to see a movie CALLED Valentine’s Day ON Valentine’s Day. It’s the laziest, easiest response to “Hey, we need something to do for our Valentine’s Day together. I know what we should do!”

I’m certain the large cast had something to do with it as well. The producers basically played the odds and gambled that at least ONE of those actors would get you to buy a ticket. It looks like their gamble paid off.

I hope the success of Valentine’s Day doesn’t spur a bunch of copycat movies that stack the deck with 2 dozen different well-known actors. Having so many big names to feature makes it sound like the story doesn’t support them. I mean, you can’t really develop that many characters at once and be successful. Even Love, Actually – which has built up a lot of good will over the years – falls down on this point.

My sister-in-law saw Valentine’s Day with friends and my wife asked her a lot of questions about it. I think it reflects the “car crash” interest in this movie. People want to watch it because they want to see if they can pull it off. According to my sister-in-law, they don’t.

I won’t spoil anything for you in case you want to see it, but she referenced two different points in the script where the audience audibly groaned at the contrivance on screen. So, buyer beware.

I will say this… For those of you thinking about going to see this movie for Julia Roberts, my sister-in-law warns that she is on screen for about 6 minutes. But, again, considering there are 19 different actors in this thing and the movie is 125 minutes long… an appearance of about 6 minutes is pretty much on the nose. Do the math. It shakes out right.

I’m curious if anyone here saw Valentine’s Day this weekend. If so, what were your thoughts? Feel free to leave your comments below!