1 star (out of four)
New Year’s Eve is
like a commercial without a product to sell. Which is a shame, really, because
it feels like a good opportunity for Ashton Kutcher to pose with his Nikon.
The movie follows more than a dozen different characters in
New York City as they send off 2011 with no shortage of style or heartfelt
monologues, mostly congregating in or around Times Square for the ball drop at
midnight. The huge ensemble cast is a gimmick though, a stunt I will concede is
impressive as an exercise in unabashed excess. “How will all these people ever
fit in one movie?” we ask.
The simple answer is that they don’t, or at least director
Garry Marshall and screenwriter Katherine Fugate are incapable of doing
anything more with these actors than throwing them together in a jumbled,
disorderly mess. The film cuts between its storylines with little narrative
rhyme or reason; its scenes appear to have been ordered arbitrarily. The movie
may as well have been edited by an iPod shuffle.
Mathematically speaking, cramming all these people into a
single two-hour film means nobody gets much more than fifteen minutes of screen
time apiece. (Feel free to check my math on that one.) A number of the minor
characters receive considerably less. So as an actor strapped for time, you
better spit out that expository dialogue quick before your scene gets cut
short.
For expediency’s sake, it helps too if the storylines eschew
originality and just borrow vague ideas and setups from romantic comedies past.
Katherine Heigl is in Desperate Damsel mode (a cakewalk for her by now) as the
head chef in possibly the least busy restaurant kitchen in movie history. Where
else but in the Heiglverse does a professional caterer on New Year’s Eve have
the time to throw a temper tantrum (and eggs) with her sous chef Sofía Vergara
in between idle chats with a former lover played by none other than Jon Bon
Jovi?
Zac Efron, meanwhile, helps Michelle Pfeiffer check off
everything on her resolution list with a charm that might have made a young
John Cusack (unfortunately not present) jealous. The handsome Josh Duhamel
seeks to reconnect with a woman he met last New Year’s and agreed to meet again
tonight at the same café. A typically frantic Sarah Jessica Parker struggles to
keep her daughter Abigail Breslin from leaving the nest too soon. And Ashton
Kutcher, a certified New Year’s cynic, gets trapped in an elevator with Glee star Lea Michele, who, fear not, is given ample
opportunities to sing.
Robert De Niro appears as a man on life support, a bit of
casting that feels like a cruel joke, and Halle Berry plays his nurse, refusing
to allow his dying request to watch the ball drop from the hospital roof. In
another strange pairing of actors, Hilary Swank grapples with her new position
overseeing the Times Square festivities while her security officer, a comatose
Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, stands around and provides occasional comfort.
(Between this and his equally out-of-place appearance in No Strings Attached earlier this year, Bridges’s New Year’s resolution should be to find a
new agent.) In a late-film appearance as a electrician, Héctor Elizondo nearly
redeems the whole bloated affair but a prime opportunity for slapstick (he gets
stuck briefly atop the ball) is left oddly untouched.
In perhaps the film’s most improbable storyline, an
expecting young couple, Jessica Biel and Seth Myers, race to win a
hospital’s $25,000 prize for birthing the first child of the New Year. These
scenes have potential for screwball comedy but Myers, who has the acting chops
of Jerry Seinfeld, and Biel don’t have a clue what to do with the material. As
an eastern European man also vying for the cash prize, Til Schweiger gets a few
laughs but the comedy is otherwise dead in the water.
All of these characters crowd the screen in competition for
our affection but none are even half developed enough to elicit anything in the
way of audience sympathy. The characters are so dull and lifeless I found
myself wishing Ryan Seacrest’s cameo had been expanded into a full storyline.
He at least understands how to make drivel pass as entertainment, having
essentially made a whole career out of it.
The most revealing moment in the movie is in the end credits
during the requisite blooper reel of line flubs and cast pranks. We see Jessica
Biel in labor as her doctor (Carla Gugino) pulls out not a baby but a copy of Valentine’s Day (the similarly structured previous
feature from Mr. Marshall) on Blu-Ray from Biel’s vagina. It’s a sort of
perverse, self-congratulatory joke that makes me think Mr. Marshall has nothing
but a cynical, bottom line attitude towards the whole production. The
inevitable profit from this film’s box office and subsequent DVD release will
no doubt sustain him until he pops out another holiday-themed piece of junk
next year. So New Year’s Eve
really is a commercial after all. And it doesn’t even have the decency to try
and sell us anything.
- Steve Avigliano, 12/12/11
