I can hear the pitch meeting now. Since director Gary Marshall's last film, the ensemble piece VALENTINE'S DAY did decent business, let's follow it up with an even bigger cast in a film that captures the hilarity and insanity and inherent romance of Times Square on New Year's Eve. We'll call it NEW YEAR'S EVE, and we'll release it at the end of the year. The Hollywood braintrust never stops turning. I'm not going to waste your time detailing any of the stories happening in this vapid, soulless work, but please, please heed my warning, and don't let anyone drag you to this dull, meaningless, worse-than-pointless movie.
Rather than going into plot, I'll just list some names of actors who worked for about a week each (I'm guessing for scale)--in many cases, it reads like a who's who of shit romantic comedies, so imagine all of these forces together in one awful movie. Halle Berry, Jessica Biel, Jon Bon Jovi, Abigail Breslin, Josh Duhamel, Zac Efron, Katherine Heigl, Ashton Kutcher, Lea Michele, Sarah Jessica Parker, Hilary Swank, and Sofia Vergara, who continues to be completely incapable of being funny in movies while being so damn good on "Modern Family." But then we also have folks like Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Carla Gugino, and Seth Meyers, among others, who have actually been known to be good and/or funny in other films.
Yes, the stories twist and turn through each other providing ample opportunities for coincidence after god-awful coincidence to occur, and unlikely couplings to happen (Michelle Pfeiffer and Zac Efron? Really?) Then there's the tonally awful moments. Did I mention that De Niro spends the entire movie dying in a hospital room alone? How fun.
Director Marshall and his VALENTINE'S DAY writer Katherine Fugate (one of the creators of "Army Wives") have managed to take the debauchery and chaos of New Year's Eve in Times Square and make it seem pleasant, uncrowded, and not in any way gross. They also make it seem like the kind of place where two people can say, "Meet me in Times Square," and it just happens. I literally can't talk about this movie any longer. If I do, I might stab the first person I see on the street with a smile on their face. In my rage-filled mind, they will have just come from seeing NEW YEAR'S EVE and liked it, and someone like that must die. So ask yourself this: Do want to risk dying at my hands just to see this movie? If your answer is yes, get your affairs in order before you walk into the theater, and consider yourself warned.
