Veteran director Garry Marshall has dusted off the bland formula he used in "Valentine's Day" – multiple storylines played out by a gaggle of big stars – to make "New Year's Eve." It's a different day but Marshall makes the same mistakes.

It starts with the cast that includes Hilary Swank, Robert De Niro, Halle Berry, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jessica Biel, Jon Bon Jovi, Abigail Breslin, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Josh Duhamel, Zac Efron, Hector Elizondo, Katherine Heigl, (pause; take a breath) Ashton Kutcher, Seth Meyers, Lea Michele, Michelle Pfeiffer, Til Schweiger and Sofia Vergara. That's more big names than a year's enrollment at a celebrity rehab.

Marshall wastes this impressive cast. In an effort to make sure each actor gets more than 30 seconds of screen time, action bounces among multiple storylines.

Rick Bentley's one-minute review

This formula has worked before, with "Love Actually" being one of the best examples. The big difference: All the stories in "Love Actually" are interesting. Except for the thread featuring Pfeiffer as a dowdy secretary with a long – and ridiculous – New Year's resolution list and Efron as her savior, the "New Year's Eve" stories are played out with all the imagination of vanilla pudding. This would have been a far more interesting movie to have focused on the Pfeiffer/Efron story, which has the most heart and growth.

It's not only Katherine Fugate's uninspired script that makes this such a bland offering. Consider that Ryan Seacrest and Bon Jovi turn in the best acting performances. The sitcom camera angles and pauses in dialogue for laughs make it feel like paint-by-numbers filmmaking.

The movie travels light years beyond trite with the De Niro story about a man dying of cancer. And it's beyond stereotyping with Vergara's role as a sous chef with cleavage that makes a Butterball turkey look gaunt.

"New Year's Eve" plods along because of lackluster directing, a banal script and wooden acting. The only thing good: It's perfect for those in search of mindless entertainment, and Michele sings three musical numbers (although the setup for the third tune goes beyond ludicrous).

It would be great if Marshall made a New Year's resolution to not make another holiday-themed movie. That probably won't happen, so look out for Woody Harrelson, Tiger Woods, James Woods, Elijah Wood and Chris Pine in "Arbor Day."