New Year's Eve

You may remember last year, director Garry Marshall and screenwriter Katherine Fugate brought us Valentine's Day, a romantic comedy that featured a large group of Hollywood stars playing undeveloped characters in a series of stories that were all built around the title holiday. You may also remember that the movie was pretty mediocre. Now the same two people have brought us New Year's Eve, a pseudo-sequel that switches the setting from L.A. to New York, and features a slightly different large group of Hollywood stars (a couple from the first movie return) playing undeveloped characters in a series of stories built around the title holiday. The big difference this time around? Instead of being merely mediocre, this movie manages to be flat-out terrible, and a strong contender for one of the worst films of the year.

So we have the same basic idea and premise, only instead of the characters being bland and unmemorable, they now talk, act, and think like no sane person ever would. It's like watching a movie where the entire cast hails from Mars. As if to follow suit, none of the multiple stories that make up the plot manage to be funny or interesting. Here is a movie that gathers together Hilary Swank, Cary Elwes, Robert De Niro, Halle Berry, Jessica Biel, Carla Gugino, Jon Bon Jovi, and Sarah Jessica Parker (just to name a few), and can't think of a single thing to do with any of them. Anyone with the cast this film assembles could have just followed them around with a camera, and come up with a documentary infinitely more interesting than anything that happens in this movie. At least in that case, we'd be watching the actors being real people, rather than watching them play the hollow and uninteresting characters they're forced to portray here.

The movie gives us Hilary Swank playing Claire, the new Vice President of the Time Square Alliance, who is in charge of making sure the ball drops during the countdown to New Year. Her best friend is a cop (played by recording artist Chris "Ludacris" Bridges), who serves absolutely no purpose, and could have been written out entirely without consequence. Meanwhile, we have a guy who hates New Years (Ashton Kutcher) stuck in an elevator with a young woman (Lea Michelle), who is a back up singer of a popular rock star (Jon Bon Jovi), who is supposed to perform during the New Year festivities, but is more interested in trying to mend a broken romance with a woman (Katherine Heigl) he still has feelings for. In yet another plot, two competitive expecting mothers (Jessica Biel and Sarah Paulson) are fighting to give birth to the first baby of the new year, so they can collect a cash prize. In still yet another plot, a mousy secretary (Michelle Pfeiffer) tells off her boss (an uncredited John Lithgow), and goes on quest to fulfill all of her resolutions such as "go to Bali", or "be amazed" with the aid of a bike messenger (Zac Efron).

But wait, there's still more! I'm forgetting about the old man who's dying of cancer (Robert De Niro), and who's last wish is to go up to the roof of the hospital, and watch the New Year ball drop before he dies. And don't forget about the worried mother (Sarah Jessica Parker) who is chasing after her teenaged daughter (Abigail Breslin) who ran off on her to attend a party with friends. There's also a young man (Josh Duhamel) racing to get from Connecticut to New York, so that he can have a date with a mystery woman he met exactly one year ago, and is fated to meet again. All this, and I'm forgetting the wacky foreigner (Hector Elizondo) who is hired to fix the New Year ball when it malfunctions, and Halle Berry as a friendly nurse who is watching over De Niro's character, and has a lover fighting in the war overseas. You might say this movie is overstuffed with plots and characters, but that would convey that this movie was actually about something. New Year's Eve has no such lofty goals of being about anything. It is simply a cinematic dead zone where we watch a bunch of highly paid actors cashing a paycheck for a day or two's worth of work.

The whole movie has a slapped together feel to it. None of the individual scenes seem to go on for more than two minutes, so we're never given enough time to get to know this large cast of characters. This would be a great movie for those with short attention spans, as this movie doesn't require you to look or focus on anyone or anything for too long. And when the characters do open their mouths to talk, nothing they say sounds natural in the slightest. Here's a bit of sample dialogue - "There are so many things we can't control in this world - Earthquakes, floods, reality shows". Does that sound like something anyone you have ever met would say? It sounds to me like a bad joke from the first draft of a script. That's just one example, of course. To list all the examples would probably require a run through of the entire script from top to bottom.

For all the festive feelings and good spirits this movie tries to bring, I found myself quickly bored, and increasingly irritated at what this movie was trying to pull off. It's soulless, cynical trash filled with a bunch of talented people who should have known better, and probably were thinking of their more interesting projects coming up while they were filming this. While I was watching this movie, I started thinking of more interesting projects myself - Like the laundry I have to do tomorrow.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

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