“New Year’s Eve” celebrates love, hope, forgiveness, second chances and fresh starts, in intertwining stories told amidst the pulse and promise of New York City on the most dazzling night of the year.
The lives of several individuals in New York City intertwine on New Years Eve during the celebrations at Time Square. Displaying the joys and heartbreaks of love around the hope of a new year and a new beginning. Starring an array of super stars and directed by Garry Marshall (Valentines Day and actor in Happy Days).
This movie has everyone! As with it’s romantic holiday predecessor Valentines Day, this film boasts the who’s who of talented Hollywood stars. I must admit it becomes a little ridiculous how many people show up in this flick, lets list a few (not all of them just the ones I noticed)
Michelle Pfeiffer, Zac Efron, Sarah Jessica Parker, Abigail Breslin, Ashton Kutcher, Lea Michelle, Jon Bon Jovi, Katherine Heigl, Robert De Niro, Halle Berry, Josh Duhamel, Seth Myers, Jessica Biel, Carla Gugino, Til Schweiger, Cary Elwes, Sofia Vergara, Common, Alyssa Milano.
There is more, but there’s no space for them. More than half of that list is comprised of stars of high quality that were put in this film for no apparent reason at all. They had little screen time and hardly any dialogue, seemed like a pity to misuse them in this way. The stories that were happening all at once were pretty basic. Essentially every romantic cliché you can think of happening at once. The most charming of the lot being the story between Michelle Pfeiffer and Zac Efron. What happens when there’s a whole bunch of people doing a whole bunch of things? Not a lot, this is what it felt like. You are left with a film so packed with events it ends up felling uneventful. I think it’s better to have a small cast of characters and a strong story than a huge list of talented actors and a lot of fairly weak stories.
These films are meant to uplift, and in that respect it did it’s job, however if the stories were aloud more room to develop I would have received more feeling from them. They were rushed and any sincerity was forgotten. When I saw that there was Lea Michelle from Glee and Bon Jovi cast in the same film I knew what was going to happen, I thought that she was quite charming as an actress and that making the film bust into an impromptu musical number cheapened the film as the rest of it was very much based in reality. On their own every single actor in this film is fantastic but in this movie they are lost in the crowd. This average capitalization on a popular holiday has unfortunately not surprised me, it is not however without it’s charms. If you cast them, they will come.
I give New Years Eve 2 stars out of 5.