As the preview for "Valentine’s Day" runs, it’s easy to begin to wonder if it’s a joke.
    Halfway through, you’re bound to think: Wait. What actor is NOT in this movie?
    Because it seems like everyone in Hollywood is.
    The rom-com is positively stuffed with stars:
    Julia Roberts, Bradley Cooper, Ashton Kuchter, Anne Hathaway, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Jessica Biel, Patrick Dempsey, Eric Dane, Taylor Swift, Taylor Lautner, Shirley McLaine ...
    Which immediately raises two questions:
    1. Good god, what was the total spent on actors’ salaries for this thing?
    2. How much must these performers adore "Valentine’s Day" director Garry Marshall to jump into a film that they might get completely lost in?
    It’s become rarer and rarer than movies boast quite that many luminaries all gathered in one place.
    There was a time, back in the 1970s, when disaster movies were the place that name actors congregated. Oh, for the glory days of star-clotted cheese like "Towering Inferno" and "The Poseidan Adventure"!
The thing is, for every enjoyable creation with big casts — see "Love Actually" and "Ocean’s 11" — there are a multitude of crash-and-burn failures. You’ve got everything from Oliver Stone’s 1997 "U-Turn" (Sean Penn, Billy Bob Thornton, Jennifer Lopez, Jon Voight, Joaquin Phoenix, Claire Danes, Nick Nolte) to the 2009 Rob Marshall-helmed "Nine" (Daniel Day Lewis, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson, Fergie, Judi Dench).
    The truth is, an all-star cast can indicate a number of things: it’s a damned good script because it attracted all those famous faces; the director is much-beloved (see, well, any of the films by the late Robert Altman); or the final product is going to end up having too many plot strands in an effort to give each star their moment in the spotlight.
    I guess we’ll see this weekend if any of that applies to "Valentine’s Day."
    What’s your favorite star-stuffed movie?