What to watch on Valentine’s Day

Heartbroken? Devastatingly single? Head over heels in love? Here are all my recommendations for what to watch on the holiday of love, whatever your relationship status might be.

By Natalie Nemes

Ugh, romance. I want something that celebrates familial love instead.

Encanto Movie Poster (Photo credit: Disney)

Look no further than Disney’s newest animated film, “Encanto.” Available on Disney+, “Encanto” follows Mirabel Madrigal, a young Colombian woman on a journey to save the magic that keeps her home alive and gives everyone in her family their fantastical powers—well, everyone except Mirabel herself. While I expected this movie to be structured more like a magical quest in the same vein as Disney/Pixar’s “Onward,” Mirabel actually never leaves the valley where she lives. Instead, the film focuses on Mirabel’s relationships with her family members, the things that divide them as well as the love that brings them together. It’s a beautiful exploration of familial expectations, conflicts, and rectifications that reflects the fragile and complicated dynamics within all real-life families.

Platonic love is underrated! Any recommendations for a movie about friendship?

The Netflix original film “The Half of It” is a perfect fit for this category! A queer retelling of the play “Cyrano de Bergerac,” “The Half of It” is about high school senior Ellie Chu who agrees to write love letters on behalf of football player Paul Munsky to another girl in their class. While romance is the driving force of the plot of this movie, the best element of the film is easily the friendship that slowly forms between Ellie and Paul. The portrayal of the struggles of Ellie’s life as a young queer Chinese-American woman in a small town that refuses to accept or understand her is also especially striking. The character development in this film is simply lovely.

My heart has shattered into a million pieces. Something I can cry to while I eat ice cream, please?

While this isn’t a traditional let’s-cry-and-eat-ice-cream TV show, I still think that Marvel Studios’ “WandaVision” is perfect for this. Streaming on Disney+, the show centers around Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch dealing with her grief after the death of Vision in “Avengers: Infinity War.” Admittedly, this show will be hard to follow if you have limited knowledge of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films that precede it. It also struggles to find exactly what it wants to be, experimenting with a meta-sitcom format that makes the tone of the show a bit inconsistent. On the other hand, it is also a moving exploration of what it means to lose a loved one and the devastation that follows. As Vision puts it, “What is grief, if not love persevering?”

WandaVision film art (Photo credit: IMDb)

I’m also heartbroken, but I’d rather watch something that’ll cheer me up.

If you want a good laugh, please, watch “Derry Girls!” Available to watch on Netflix, there are two short seasons of six episodes each, and each episode is only about 20-24 minutes in length, making the entire series a relatively quick watch. The series follows high school students attending a private Catholic school in Northern Ireland during the ‘90s, a time during which political unrest between Protestants and Catholics created sporadic violence and tension between the area’s inhabitants. “Derry Girls” approaches this environment with a sense of humor that pokes fun at some of the more ironic facets of the conflict while still lending gravity to the more serious sides of it. Packed with whip-smart dialogue and colorful characters, this is one of the funniest comedies that you will ever watch.

I don’t care what it is, I just want a love triangle.

If you’re a fan of the love triangle trope, I would definitely recommend watching Mindy Kaling’s “Never Have I Ever,” available to stream on Netflix. Even if you’re sick of the love triangle trope because you’re tired of watching a mediocre protagonist fall for two even duller love interests, I promise you: You’ve never seen a love triangle executed like this before. Both of the love interests have engaging character arcs that give them depth, and the show does a (mostly) good job of making it seem like the protagonist, Devi, might end up with either of them. The real heart of the show, though, is Devi herself. She’s definitely hateable by some standards, but I found her to be an overall realistic portrayal of what teenagers are like during their years in high school. She messes up constantly and undergoes a lot of character growth over the course of the show as she learns to take responsibility for her actions. The examination of Devi’s complicated relationship with her mother in the wake of her father’s death is hard-hitting when it needs to be, while the show’s humor balances the more serious themes out to create an overall uplifting watching experience.

I feel in love, and I want something warm and fuzzy that’ll reflect how I feel.

I have to go with the cult classic film “The Princess Bride” for this one. Simultaneously a fantasy action-adventure film, a comedy, and a romance, “The Princess Bride” balances all of these elements expertly to create the perfect comfort movie to watch on a warm and fuzzy Valentine’s Day. It follows the love story of Westley and Buttercup, a young couple who are separated and reunited through a series of events both hilarious and appropriately dramatic. The supporting characters in particular are a standout aspect of the film, with each having their own fleshed out personalities and motivations that add to and support the main storyline. Available on Disney+.

Poster for The Princess Bride (Photo credits: Hulu)

I’m single. Help?

Y’all, please, if you haven’t seen the 2019 version of “Little Women” yet, go watch it. (Unfortunately, it isn’t available free to watch on any subscription streaming platform. If you have a DVD player, consider supporting your local library by loaning its copy. Otherwise, the movie is available for purchase on Amazon Prime Video.) The star-studded cast is by itself a good enough reason to give this adaptation of the classic novel by Louisa May Alcott a chance. Featuring wonderful performances from Saoirse Ronan and Timothée Chalamet as Jo and Laurie, and an absolutely dazzling performance from Florence Pugh as Amy, “Little Women” investigates what it means to be a young woman navigating the transition from childhood to adulthood in the 1860s. This movie will speak to college students in particular, who, like Jo, are undergoing the hard transition of leaving behind the comfort of their youth and moving forward into the bright lights of the future. Admittedly, at first glance this might seem like far from a celebration of singledom, with romance being a central theme of the film. However, at its core, it’s about women learning and growing, and at times, men just happen to be a part of that journey. There is also something to be said for the ambiguous way in which the film ends, which allows the watcher to decide whether Jo’s story ends with romance the way it does in the book — or not.