New Year’s Eve is
a cinematic Wal-Mart, crowded, cavernous, filled with cheap versions of exactly
the products you’d expect, and no one seems particularly happy to be there. Like
Valentine’s Day, also inflicted,
albeit with less pain, by director Garry Marshall, the new film is a massive
ensemble romantic comedy built around a holiday, a slickly produced product,
nothing more than an excuse to see dozens of celebrities, or at least
recognizable faces, playing just about everyone on screen but the extras. It
used to be that when this many name actors showed up in one place the boat was
capsizing or the skyscraper’s ribbon-cutting party was going up in flames. Now,
all that happens is precisely what you’d expect in the form of predictable,
plodding sitcom pandering and plots thin to the point of breaking. The only
disaster is how exhaustingly cliché and dispiritingly unimaginative it is.
There are 31 recognizable faces (at least when I counted
them just now on the cast list from IMDb) in New Year’s Eve, which zips around New York on December 31, 2011 as
people fall in love (never out, this is one aggressively happy movie) and find
their soul mates. It seems pointless to try and point out individual characters
and motivations as the film is so cluttered and static that by the time we’ve
met everyone and learned their main conflict, there’s barely time to resolve them
before the ball drops and Times Square explodes in confetti. Besides, the
characters barely registered in my head as anything but the person playing
them. It’s like a bad school play in which you can only think about little
Bobby when you’re meant to see the man supposedly on his deathbed.
Of course in this case little Bobby’s last name is DeNiro.
His nurse is Halle Berry and his doctor is Cary Elwes. Then there’s Hilary
Swank directing the Times Square festivities, fretting about the ball drop with
security guard Ludacris. When, much to the dismay of Ryan Seacrest (as
himself), there’s a technical glitch, Hector Elizondo shows up to fix it.
There’s also Sarah Jessica Parker who says daughter Abigail Breslin can’t go
downtown with Jake T. Austin. Stuck in an elevator in their apartment building
are Ashton Kutcher and Lea Michele. Jessica Biel and Seth Meyers are about to
have a baby and are competing with Sarah Paulson and Til Schweiger to have the
first baby of the New Year. OB/GYN Carla Gugino is not amused. Mousy secretary
Michelle Pfeiffer convinces bike messenger Zac Efron to help her finish her
list of resolutions before midnight. Executive Josh Duhamel catches a ride into
the city with Yeardley Smith and family. And Katherine Heigl and Sofia Vergara
are catering Cherry Jones’s fancy party at which Jon Bon Jovi (not playing
himself) will perform.
As you can see, it’s a little ridiculous. It got to the
point that, when Ludacris tells Hilary Swank that “Mr. so-and-so is here,” I
was only pondering which famous face would step out of the back of that limo.
(Matthew Broderick). Rather than bringing all we know about the personas to
their roles to serve as some kind of insta-character, the overloaded cast only
points out the thinness of it all. Not a one of these plotlines could stand by
itself. Worse, the way Katherine Fugate’s script stumbles from one scene to the
next refuses to allow the characters to thematically interact. This is a movie
that has nothing to say and little idea of how to even make that fact entertaining. We’re supposed
to be delighted when, say Efron answers the phone “hey, sis,” and we learn
which big name has been – gasp! – his sister this whole time! If the film were packed with too many Meet Cutes
and sweeping smooches, it would still reach a point of diminishing returns well
before the film’s credit cookies but at least it wouldn’t be quite so empty.
For all of these actors present, so many dumb threads of plot, there’s just not
enough to sustain two hours. Why couldn’t someone find something interesting
for someone, anyone, in the cast to do? New
Year’s Eve is a celebration of the superficial without the energy or the
trashy pleasure such celebrations could provide.
