This holiday star-fest is a cute little cupcake of a movie, light and frilly-looking, with just enough icing to leave a sweet taste (or be sickening, if one doesn’t care for so much Hollywood icing).  This is the second of Garry Marshall’s female-themed holiday films (following 2010’s Valentine’s Day); I wonder if Mother’s Day is next.  I skipped Valentine’s Day because it looked super-sappy, but I’ll still probably see it some day. I could not similarly escape New Year’s Eve.

How familiar a cast is it?  I recognized twenty-eight different performers as they strutted across the screen.  28!  Sometimes when I want to challenge a fellow film buff, I’ll ask them to name a movie in which they can list at least ten different performers, and then name those performers.  It’s harder than it seems; disaster films are usually the best candidates for this little game.  Now, with New Year’s Eve, you can name any ten famous people in Hollywood and there’s a good chance that one of them is in this movie.  Is that a good thing?  For star gazers, I suppose so, but it’s more distracting than entertaining, especially when some of them are rather creepily miscast (Robert De Niro.  Michelle Pfeiffer.  Matthew Broderick.).

The movie itself is hit and miss.  A bunch of stories about loneliness invariably intersect, with people finding each other as Times Square prepares for its big annual moment.  Most of the characters are wafer thin but some of the performances allow for some genuine growth and warmth (Halle Berry.  Josh Duhamel.  Ludacris.). Others, not so much.  I didn’t believe the love affair between Katharine Heigl and Jon Bon Jovi, nor did I care if Jessica Biel won the race to have a baby.  And don’t get me started on mousy Michelle Pfeiffer.

This would be a no-brainer, two-star, cotton candy fluff movie all the way for me, but for one scene.  Times Square event director Hilary Swank has a scene where she must update a (supposedly anxious) audience about the giant, lighted ball, which is stuck, dark, halfway up its pole.  Her seemingly spontaneous thoughts about New Year’s Eve are astonishingly literate, insightful and touching; her speech is easily the best-written monologue in the film, and the scene is rather beautifully done.  That scene alone raises the movie’s rating a half-star for me, and I hope it remains in my memory for a long time.  ✰ ✰ ½.  27 Dec. 2011.