Entertainment

‘Valentine’s Day’ is a heart-shaped pox

Sitting through the all-star fiasco “Valentine’s Day” is like consuming a 5-pound box of cheap chocolates at a single sitting.

Less funny or romantic than your average colonoscopy, this cringe-inducing bore provides dubious employment for four Oscar winners, two nominees and a raft of TV performers such as George Lopez, all of whom have been seen to far better advantage elsewhere.

Directed by Garry Marshall with absolutely none of the expertise he brought to “Pretty Woman” (let alone TV’s “Love, American Style”), “Valentine’s Day” is basically a cross between “Crash” and an infomercial for the Society of American Florists — a meandering, corny rom-com with a series of loosely connected tales of Los Angelenos on the titular holiday.

PHOTOS: “VALENTINE’S DAY” RED CARPET

If this black hole of a movie can be said to have a center, it’s the reliably awful Ashton Kutcher as a florist who proposes to his girlfriend (Jessica Alba) in the morning and is dumped by lunch. He spends the rest of the day trying to save his best friend (Jennifer Garner) from her secretly married doctor boyfriend (Patrick Dempsey).

Another running story involves a TV reporter (Jamie Foxx) who is annoyed to be doing a story on the holiday assigned by his boss (Kathy Bates) when he’d rather pursue an NFL player (Eric Dane) with a not-so-big secret, by way of the player’s lovelorn press agent (Jessica Biel).

Among the others wasting their time are the Pretty Woman herself, Julia Roberts, as an Army captain traveling from halfway around the world for a brief Valentine’s Day rendezvous; Bradley Cooper as the wiseguy in the next airplane seat; Roberts’ niece Emma as a high schooler plotting to lose her virginity on lunch break; and, as her classmates in blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em roles, Taylor Lautner and singer Taylor Swift.

Another Marshall alumna, Anne Hathaway, squeezes out most of the movie’s extremely scarce laughs as a phone sex worker. The same cannot be said for Topher Grace, as her dull romantic interest, or Queen Latifah as her boss.

Like last month’s equally egregious “When in Rome,” this is a sloppy mess that can’t even be bothered to light and photograph its gorgeous cast properly. The felony is compounded in the case of Shirley MacLaine, who is forced to stand in front of a clip from “Hot Spell,” a movie she made more than half a century ago. In a cemetery!

Warner Bros. has already announced the same team will be making a follow-up called “New Year’s Day.” Government intervention may become necessary.

lou.lumenick@nypost.com