New Year’s Eve

The lives of a variety of New Yorkers intertwine as the crowd gathers in Times Square for the dropping of the ball. Writer Katherine Fugate and director Garry Marshall recycle the formula that paid off in Valentine’s Day, with another all-star cast (Katherine Heigl, Jon Bon Jovi, Hillary Swank, Michelle Pfeiffer, Zac Efron, Halle Berry, Robert De Niro, Sarah Jessica Parker, Ashton Kutcher—and that’s just for starters) going through all of Fugate’s meet-cutes and contrivances. Some threads are stronger than others—Pfeiffer as a dowdy office drone and Efron as a messenger boy helping her with her bucket list deserved their own movie—but Marshall moves from one to the next before any one wears thin. The result is a nice box of holiday chocolates; not See’s or Godiva, maybe, but good Russell Stover.