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New Year's Eve
| Released |
9 December 2011 |
| Director |
Garry Marshall |
Starring
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Halle Berry, Jessica Biel, Jon Bon Jovi, Abigail Breslin, Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges, Robert De Niro, Josh Duhamel, Zac Efron, Hector Elizondo, Katherine Heigl, Ashton Kutcher, Seth Meyers,Lea Michele, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michelle Pfeiffer, Til Schweiger, Hilary Swank, Sofia Vergara |
| Writer(s) |
Katherine Fugate |
| Producer(s) |
Mike Karz, Wayne Rice |
| Origin |
United States |
| Running Time |
118 minutes |
| Genre |
Comedy, romance |
| Rating |
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|
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Schmaltz.
I've never seen much magic in New Year's Eve always considering it a bit like Christmas's simultaneously drunk and hungover sister that stays long after the party should be over and this combo effort from writer Katherine Fugate (Army Wives) and director Gary Marshall (Pretty Woman) is unlikely to change my mind. Seemingly unashamed by the critical savaging of Valentine's Day the above esteemed teamsters take another stab at cashing in on sentiment and mass appeal with a movie centring around a world-recognised day a little less obviously cinematically exploited than Halloween or Christmas.
I don't think many held much hope for New Year's Eve as a film but for those that did one trip to the movie theatre will quickly see it quenched. You might even consider the swathes of A and B listers that disproportionately bulge from New Year's Eve, faces familiar and likeable enough to weather any smug and cynically packaged storm. But even those faces usually enough to get you through less than appealing movie fare will disappoint here, you might even watch some respect you may have had for these actors ebb away and faces that were familiar become a little repugnant.
An NY based ensemble piece with a plot thinner than a cat's whisker, New Year's Eve is an on-the-nose look at how some disparate New Yorker's lives entwine that would be forgettable if it weren't so awful. Unfortunately falling foul of the unwritten rule haunting the holiday movie, i.e. movies which fail in any attempt to evoke their particular festive event's true sentiment will by the very trying seem so mercilessly devoid of soul that missteps seem like miles.
New Year's Eve is a day that is equally about endings as it is beginnings and as assuredly as New Year's Eve (the movie) begins you'll find yourself wishing it would end. So in an unexpected and quite gruesome turn of events it educes some kind of appropriate reaction.
- Cormac O’Brien |
