If you follow the cinematic landscape at all, you know what to expect when December comes around. On the one hand there are the heavyweight awards contenders coming out like this year’s War Horse or Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. On the other hand, there are the major blockbusters hitting the screens like Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol or the Sherlock Holmes sequel. And then, inevitably, there are star-studded romantic comedies that try to cash in on the dating crowds around Christmas time. Examples in the recent years include The Holiday, How Do You Know, The Family Stone and Did You Hear About the Morgans? This is not to say that all of the December-released romantic comedies are uninspired cash grabs. Something’s Gotta Give, starring Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson, which was released in 2003 was Nancy Meyers’ best work and a thoroughly entertaining film. The Family Stone, despite its somewhat misleading marketing, had some merits of its own as well. However the majority of these films follow a simple formula: generic plot coupled with recognizable romcom genre stars and lots of fluff. Usually there is some hook involved too which connects the film to the time of the year it is released in.

The movie clearly falling into this category this year is Garry Marshall’s unofficial Valentine’s Day follow-up New Year’s Eve. It takes the ingredients I have mentioned above to the extreme in order to create the most efficient cash cow possible. Unfortunately, the director forgot to actually make a movie along the way so that these ingredients just stay somewhat disconnected.

Valentine’s Day, was, of course the starting point for this film. It wasn’t terribly original, but the idea of taking pretty much every other romantic comedy star that the world knows and an iconic romcom director (Garry Marshall of Pretty Woman’s fame) and put them into one movie (in a way creating the polar opposite of The Expendables) was something special. It paid off too as that film had a record-breaking opening and ended up making an impressive $110 million at the North American box-office. Since this is Hollywood we are talking about, it didn’t take long until a sequel was pitched and New Year’s Eve was chosen as the next best hook now that Valentine’s Day has been used. On top of that as the sequels are always supposed to be bigger in, well, everything, Marshall decided that it needed to top the number of recognizable faces as seen in Valentine’s Day. As the result it feels like New Year’s Eve stars almost everyone who has ever been in a romantic comedy, except for Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock (who miraculously managed to stay out of this “franchise” altogether). We see appearances by Zac Efron, Michelle Pfeiffer, Ashton Kutcher, Jessica Biel, Halle Berry, Katherine Heigl, Josh Duhamel and Sarah Jessica Parker. That’s probably not even have of the known names that turn up in the film, even though some of the appearances are just for a few seconds (seriously, Matthew Broderick and James Belushi, why?!).

Like Valentine’s Day, the movie follows several separate and some not even loosely connected storylines on New Year’s Eve 2011 in New York City (which is, admittedly, a better setting than Los Angeles). Describing each and every one of them would take up too much space and doesn’t ultimately matter anyway. Let’s just say that not a single cliché is left untouched here and every single aspect of romances is touched upon (except for break-ups weirdly enough). There is a dying, regretful old man (Robert de Niro needed another solid payheck). There are two couples (Sarah Paulson, Til Schweiger, Jessica Biel and Seth Meyers) competing for whose baby will be born first on the New Year’s night, a young girl (Abigail Breslin quite grown up) trying to break free from her overprotective mother (Sarah Jessica Parker) who in turn is single and not too happy about it. Not to forget the talented cook/caterer (Katherine Heigl) who heart has been broken by a famous singer (umm, Jon Bon Jovi acts again?) who now tries to win her back. This is just a fraction of the storylines going on and going deeper into most of them is futile as even brief descriptions suffice to know who it’ll all turn out.

The sad thing is that there are actually a couple of the storylines that do have something more to them than just an assembly of clichés and groan-worthy moments. Michelle Pfeiffer’s timid records company employee who decided to finally break out of her shell and fulfil some of her dreams is one of those more interesting characters. Her interplay with Zac Efron (who’s a better actor than the High School Musical films might lead one to believe) is amusing and does have some heart-warming moments to it. Put in a separate movie this actually would have had some potential. Most of the other stories, unfortunately, never rise above what they are: silly plays on romcom archetypes. What helps the film somewhat is that unlike in Valentine’s Day, there is a definite climax that this movie works towards – midnight. On the other hand, the plot threads are even less connected here and while there are a gazillion of stars present in the film, it never feels as anything other than it was intended to be by the studio – a showcase of pretty faces and polished sets. Valentine’s Day was far from a great representative of the genre, but more of the stories in it worked and it had a far more cohesive feel to it.

New Year’s Eve is an uninspired piece of filmmaking and while some members of the cast truly do their best to make this work you can see that others are just there for the money or as a favor to the director. It’s not an all-out awful film and I have seen worse romantic comedies as well, but the main reason the film should be avoided is for how shamelessly it just tries to coax the money out of the average moviegoers’ pockets by trying to sell them the essence of the romcom genre without ever actually using this essence to create something that resembles an actual film.