MODEST folk, New Yorkers. They celebrate New Year’s Eve as if they had copyright on it. That’s the ambience of the film that Garry Marshall has confected around Times Square during the afternoon and evening of December 31, 2011.

Katherine Fugate’s screenplay assembles a parade of characters from across a broad spectrum of social and economic levels, about whom she tells stories that may or may not intersect as midnight approaches.

To her credit, she works hard at skirting around predictability until well into the final reel when the conjunctions are only a breath away from resolution.

The milk of human kindness flows freely through most of the film, in a Big Apple unblemished by drug abuse, AIDS, the deepest excesses of poverty, street violence, where partying is a smooth-functioning cultural diversion for all to enjoy and the relationship between restless youth and police force is smooth and congenial.

The film invites filmgoers to play two mental games. When out-takes begin to roll alongside the end credits, has its jigsaw puzzle structure formed a cohesive plot matching the sum of its parts? And how many actors can they identify playing characters with speaking parts? I won’t spoil the latter for you. It gave me a mixture of delight at seeing familiar faces and perplexity at seeing faces I recognised, but couldn’t quite name.

The film’s chief achievement is managing the logistic requirements for occupying a massive public space over an extended period, to stage a future event among the iconic landmarks of its streetscape.

I wonder how it will all go on the actual night. The film invites local media to compare that reality with the film’s fantasy.

At all cinemas