New Year's Eve

Director Garry Marshall and screenwriter Katherine Fugate lift in toto the same framework of their previous collaboration, Valentine's Day – the holiday theme, the puzzle-piece narrative, the overstuffed cast of stars, the colorless execution. On New Year's Eve in New York City, disparate people try to make it a night to remember, angling for a midnight kiss, a rendezvous with a mystery woman, a reconciliation with a lost love, or the prize of pushing out the first baby of the new year. Marshall has corralled a considerable share of Oscar-caliber talent here, only to coax frankly embarrassing work from them; Swank, for instance, delivers every line with the same perky patience one uses to teach a first-grader how to tie a shoe.

There's a difference between pleasant escapism and just plain half-assedness, and New Year's Eve – a flimsy fiction to start with – can't even muster the strength of its own convictions. (Case in point: What the hell kind of caterer serves Jell-O at a black-tie function? Further, could no one show Heigl, as said caterer, a few knife skills before rolling camera?) There are blips of charm and genuine sentiment, so rare as to feel accidentally arrived at (see: teen dream Zac Efron, loosey-goosey and looking like the only actor having a whit of fun; Halle Berry, who could wring a tear out of a dead tree trunk). But mostly, New Year's Eve is appalling stuff, a poorly constructed, sentimental sham. Auld lang suck.