Vardalos' 'Valentine's Day' a big, fat disappointment

Ever since her 2002 sleeper romance "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" struck box office gold, screenwriter/actress Nia Vardalos has practically made a side career out of squandering a personal fortune in good will and popularity.

With the release of "I Hate Valentine's Day," her personal stocks haven't just tanked. They've created their own Great Depression.

After "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" came the 2004 comedy "Connie and Carla" (written by Vardalos) where Vardalos and Toni Collette played Chicago singers who, while on the run from the mob, pose as drag queens.

Market alert: Nia stocks dropping fast!

Next up came this year's "My Life in Ruins," a big-screen sitcom channeling TV's "The Love Boat" in which Vardalos' travel guide on a Greek tour bus solves all her patrons' personal problems - with help from Richard Dreyfuss' curmudgeonly widower.

Market alert: Nia stocks dipping into negative territory!

Now comes Vardalos' directorial debut (she also wrote the screenplay) "I Hate Valentine's Day," which reunites the actress with her "Greek Wedding" co-star John Corbett, also known as the hottest date Carrie Bradshaw ever had on HBO's "Sex and the City."

Market alert: Nia stocks crash!

"I Hate Valentine's Day" is the kind of simplistic, syrupy movie that serious filmmakers might create as a film school project, then pray that nobody would ever see after they got their careers up and running.

Vardalos plays Genevieve, a perpetually perky owner of a Brooklyn flower shop.

As she merrily flits about the borough, supported by two screeching gay caricatures (Amir Arison and Stephen Guarino) employed as her assistants, Genevieve espouses her personal philosophy for maintaining a lifetime of perfect romance: dump every guy after the fateful fifth date.

"When the romance is gone," she says, "time to move on!"

Genevieve frequently receives phone calls from a man professing to be her father, and begging her to return his calls. She doesn't.

Oh, oh. Big daddy issues.

Clearly, this florist is a few roses short of an emotional bouquet. Yet, every single person in New York beats a path to Genevieve's door, hoping to hear some sagely, Cyrano de Bergerac-esque advice that will provide him/her with romance.

At least for five dates.

Corbett plays Greg, a studly attorney who gave up the rat race to buy a restaurant within spitting distance of Genevieve's shop. He seems like a nice guy, clueless to his own sex appeal, and his idea of a joke is to endlessly tell people the name of his new Tapas restaurant, "Get on Tapas."

"Get on tapas!" he says. "Get it?"

Nobody watching the movie thinks this is funny. In fact, nobody in the movie thinks this is funny. Yet, the joke gets told. Again. And again.

Genevieve has a best pal named Tammy (a comically gifted Zoe Kazan) who thinks stalking men is the highest form of flattery. She can't understand why men freak out when she presents them with a scrapbook of photos from their entire lives.

Tammy's antics prove to be the one true source of limited laughs in "I Hate Valentine's Day." Not so with Greg's best pal from law school, Cal (Gary Wilmes), a character of such pitiful shallowness and loathsome self-centeredness that to see him on the screen equates to a thumbnail being dragged to its death on a chalkboard.

Vardalos the actress clearly works best under the wing of a director tuned into her appeal as a performer. Vardalos is clearly not that director.

She spends the first half of "I Hate Valentine's Day" with a fake smile plastered on her face as if she's in a very lengthy toothpaste commercial. Later, when she's sad, she stops smiling, and doing everything else a lead actress should be doing, too.

There's never any question that Genevieve will reconsider her five-date rule. And that she will finally return a call to dear old dad. There are no surprises, no twists and no moments of genuine spontaneity in "I Hate."

Just a by-the-numbers romance with a cliched Hollywood ending where everyone in Brooklyn shows up to cheer the happy couple's reunion.

As Genevieve might say, "When the romance feels fake, a date to it don't take."

"I Hate Valentine's Day"

Rating: 1 star

Starring: Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Jay O. Sanders, Mike Starr

Directed by: Nia Vardalos

Other: At the Music Box Theatre, Chicago. An IFC Films release. Rated PG-13 for sexual situations. 98 minutes