As if starting the year with a thumping hangover and a list of resolutions destined for failure wasn’t enough, cinemagoers are also faced with enduring Garry Marshall’s risible New Year’s Eve. After the surprise success of Valentine’s Day, which renewed the age-old Hollywood trend of large ensemble comedies, the same creative team returns for a second holiday-themed dose of the feel-goods that fails to deliver on almost every level.

Taking place in New York City on the last day of the year, we follow a random assortment of strangers as they prepare to ring in 2012. The film is convinced that not only will New Yorkers have their eyes glued to Time Square, but that the whole world will unite in simultaneous celebration the moment the big ball drops. One of the film’s major story strands revolves around Hilary Swank, Ludacris and Hector Elizondo ensuring the ball works properly, but audiences outside the US may be forgiven for not even knowing what the ball is, let alone the relevance of it dropping, as for them, midnight will have long passed by the time the East Coast begins its celebrations.

But the sad truth is that this is one of the film’s more engaging and sensible subplots. Elsewhere, Zac Efron’s bike courier plays fairy godmother to Michelle Pfeiffer’s disgruntled secretary. Why? Because it’s New Year’s Eve and time for new beginnings! All past indiscretions are absolved at the stroke of midnight in this ridiculously illogical world. Teenagers sneak out to attend street parties, pregnant couples forget they are about to bring a new life into the world and feud over winning a cash prize from the hospital if they deliver the first baby of the new year.

Meanwhile a chef (Katherine Heigl) and a rockstar (Jon Bon Jovi) attempt to reconcile their differences and a terminal cancer patient (Robert De Niro) just wants to see one last New Year with his daughter before he dies. The film is so utterly devoid of meaning, yet determined to point out that an arbitrary moment every year resonates around the world and inspires us to be better people. While it does, admittedly, promote goodwill towards men and women and the bringing together of families and friends, NEW YEAR’S EVE does so on the most flimsy and superficial of levels and cannot hide the fact that it’s nothing more than a half-baked cash grab for the studio, its stars and even its parent company.

Product placement is rife throughout the film – whether it be for hand cream, restaurants, magazines or even other movies, but viewers really only have themselves to blame. There is only one reason to see a movie like New Year’s Eve and that is to watch your favourite stars up on the big screen, and in that respect, the film delivers. What it fails to do is produce anything resembling an actual film, suggesting that perhaps in future these old acquaintances should be forgot.