While last year’s sprawling, star-studded rom-com He’s Just Not That Into You, for all of its flaws, had an affable Woody Allen-esque quality to it, Valentine’s Day is a thoroughly insipid retread of the same premise, proving that casting half of the Hollywood A-List in your film does not make it instantly tolerable.

The most apparent problem with Valentine’s Day is just how thinly it spreads itself; featuring close to a dozen narratives, the film rarely stops long enough to present the characters with any depth beyond that of a piece of flat-packed furniture (Jamie Foxx’s career-driven love cynic is particularly underdeveloped). Meanwhile, the more compelling stories – such as the oddball relationship between an everyman mail clerk (Topher Grace) and a sex line worker (Anne Hathaway) - are generally bustled to the back, while the more familiar and incredibly obvious romance plots are usually the lengthier, more star-studded ones used to pull the crowds in.

For a cast including the talented likes of Julia Roberts, Jamie Foxx and Kathy Bates, it’s surprising that Ashton Kutcher is thrown the ball as the film’s romantic lead; a lovelorn florist who, after being ditched by his recent fiancée (Jessica Alba), tries to make the best of Valentine’s Day by preventing his good friend (Jennifer Garner) from making a big mistake and falling head-over-heels for her love-rat beau. Kutcher’s reputation as a goofball may precede him, but here he’s one of the more personable and frankly, more human characters. Also outstanding is Topher Grace as an awkward sad sack, while legendary character actor Hector Elizondo is arguably the most sympathetic character throughout, having to deal with the gravity of learning an unpleasant secret about his wife of many decades (Shirley MacLaine).

However, few emotional notes ring true in Valentine’s Day, and writer Katherine Fugate is keen to blitz through a laundry list of rom-com clichés, making this an arduous watch for even the most unapologetic sentimentalist. Perhaps most infuriating is that the film, with its mockery of the famous “airport scene” that has plagued the genre for years, is nevertheless keen to reinforce the conventions of the genre despite clearly being self-aware enough to know better. However, it’s not clever enough to earn the right to be smug, and the whole mess – particularly the scenes featuring Taylor Swift and Twilight’s Taylor Lautner, and the O.C style teen drama involving Emma Roberts – reeks of ham-fisted star-vehicle fare.

One single remark stands out as insightful in Valentine’s Day; that people have to acknowledge their love in front of others or it seems not to exist, but aside from this, there’s nothing particularly nourishing to take away from it. Some areas are horribly underdeveloped to the point of barely seeming coherent (chiefly Jessica Alba’s swift dumping of Kutcher’s character), while the plot changes up with such speed (but not much energy), that there’s barely a moment to get emotionally invested in any of the characters, no matter how much you might want to.

A vapid, only occasionally funny date movie, Valentine’s Day features a distinguished cast, but pits it against a platitude-infused script that's overly schmaltzy and lacking in much emotional plausibility.