Starring Ashton Kutcher, Jennifer Garner, and Julia Roberts. Rated PG. Opens Friday, February 12.

Is it too much to ask that a film with a name like Valentine’s Day serve up anything but Hallmark sentiments more cloying than a heart-shaped box of Pot of Gold?

It would be, except that veteran director Garry Marshall’s sprawling film, packed with big-name stars, aspires to something Robert Altman–esque. But without edge or laughs, it’s just a sprawling story line—an endless trail of fluff.

Valentine’s Day takes more than 40 minutes to introduce all its plot threads, but here are some of the key ones: Ashton Kutcher’s flower-shop owner pops the question to less-than-enthusiastic career gal Jessica Alba; Jennifer Garner’s schoolteacher has fallen for a surgeon (Patrick Dempsey) who might be married; Anne Hathaway is a clerk trying to hide her job moonlighting as an “adult phone entertainer” from her new boss (Queen Latifah) and her new flame (Topher Grace); and Hector Elizondo and Shirley MacLaine are two seniors dealing with a past affair. It’s safe to say no one will be winning any Oscars here.

It’s hard to choose which is more painful: seeing Jessica Biel flail around as a neurotic sports agent canoodling with Jamie Foxx’s TV reporter, or watching the man-child behind Punk’d go lovey-dovey—“sappy-cheeseball”, as he puts it—gushing about being engaged. (“I just like saying it; I feel so grown-up!”) Garner manages to find an angelic, Judy Garland–like glow in her one-note role, and Julia Roberts and Hangover hunk Bradley Cooper do find some fun in their split-second appearances. But only Taylor Swift really breaks out of convention here, blazing her own loopy path as a teen who drags around her gigantic Valentine’s teddy bear all day.

The big gags mostly fall flat—say, watching an old lady listen in horror as Hathaway’s phone-sex worker does her dominatrix spiel into her cell. Then again, it’s hard to be funny when you’re moralizing. Not one but two sets of 18-year-olds resolve that it’s better to wait to have sex, and it’s too bad Grace’s character has such a prudish response to his girlfriend’s secret job.

It’s Valentine’s Day and all, but you long for some honest emotion or real conflict. By the end, the sight of Garner’s goody-goody pounding the crap out of a heart-shaped piñata with a baseball bat is far more cathartic than it was ever meant to be.