Hotel de Love

Hotel de Love is a pleasant and sometimes funny film, without being completely satisfying.

Hotel de Love, the directing and screenwriting debut of Craig Rosenberg, is like a Valentine's Day box of heart-shaped chocolates that all have the same too-sweet cherry fillings.

Some of it looks like a TV commercial, and the characters' motivations could have been generated by a computer, but the cast--Ray Barrett, Julia Blake, Simon Bossell, Saffron Burrows, Pippa Grandison, and Aden Young--is attractive and energetic.

Unfortunately, Hotel de Love also has all the originality of an all-purpose valentine. First- time filmmaker Craig Rosenberg appears to have seen every relationship movie ever made. To his credit, he borrowed only from the best.

Writer/director Craig Rosenberg is no master of subtlety -- in fact, he seems to have only two settings, whacking excess and treacly pathos -- and the film is awash in ponderous whimsy.

The young stars are attractive and capable, but Hotel de Love is as synthetic as an old "Love Boat" episode.

This is billed as a romantic comedy, but it's much more boring than funny.