Movie Summary of New Year’s Eve by Michael The Moviegoer.
NEW YEAR’S EVE = zero stars
“Dropping The Ball”
Two-time Oscar-winner Hilary Swank has spent most of her post-Oscar-winning life wishing she could delete her starring role in 1994’s “The Next Karate Kid” from her resume, and from existence. That makes her willingness to appear in “New Year’s Eve” a true headscratcher. In Garry Marshall’s 2-hour montage of aborted movie ideas Swank plays the girl responsible for making sure the Times Square ball will drop at midnight without a hitch. Naturally, it has a power failure.
The only reason I can imagine that Swank agreed to take part in this mess is a 20-second scene she plays with a dying Robert DeNiro. It’s the only 20 seconds of “New Year’s Eve” worth watching. But it doesn’t explain DeNiro’s appearance in this movie. That’s another mystery.
In fact, “New Year’s Eve” is filled with more movie stars than a Hollywood rehab. Get out your scorecards and follow along. In addition to Swank and DeNiro, star-spotting includes Michelle Pfeiffer, Zac Efron, Halle Berry, Jessica Biel, Katherine Heigl, Ashton Kutcher, James Belushi, Sarah Jessica Parker, Abigail Breslin, Josh Duhamel, Penny Marshall, Matthew Broderick and Ludacris (that’s not a mis-spelled comment, it’s the rapper named Ludacris!). Probably most embarrassing is Ryan Seacrest because he’s playing himself.
All these characters have separate-yet-sometimes interconnecting stories. Two people are stuck in an elevator; Two pregnant couples are in a race to see who will be the first to deliver their baby in the new year for a huge cash prize, yet no cash prize is large enough to make one of the women eat an anchovy! The world’s top pop singer (played by Jon Bon Jovi, not as himself but as somebody simply named Jensen) is booked to perform at a function for which his ex-girlfriend is the pastry chef; DeNiro plays a dying cancer patient who’s last wish is to be wheeled out onto the roof of the hospital to watch the ball drop; And then there’s that damn ball, stuck frozen on its pole due to a short circuit.
The tiniest moment of real laughter comes from Marshall regular Hector Elizondo as the only electrician in the city of New York who knows how to fix the ball in time for midnight.
Otherwise there are absolutely no laughs in this film, which to call it a bad movie would be an insult to bad movies. It’s just an endless parade of jawdropping implausible scenarios that make you wonder why this large respectable cast didn’t collectively intervene to have Garry Marshall committed to an insane asylum.
In Garry Marshall’s world, a large camper can easily find street parking in New York on New Year’s Eve. In Garry Marshall’s world, the escape hatch on the roof of a stuck elevator has a padlock on it. Is someone afraid the elevator might get stolen? In Garry Marshall’s world, the music business in 2011 is still thriving enough to have the fictitious record label Ahern throw a massive party on new year’s eve, though a company executive (played by John Lithgow) has only Animotion and other 80s albums hanging in his office. In Garry Marshall’s world, Radio City Music Hall is open on New Year’s Eve only so that Michelle Pfeiffer, trying to fulfill a wish-list, can fly across the stage in some bizarre effects harness. In Garry Marshall’s world, Times Square holds a confetti-dropping rehearsal hours before midnight in which Hilary Swank shouts at her staff to not simply dump the confetti, but to “float it”.
The closing credits offer outtakes and bloopers even though this entire movie should have been one long deleted scene. So, as if someone discovered they needed something funny to happen in this movie, we’re treated to the actors’ flubs. Some of those moments even feel written and staged in a desperate attempt to leave us laughing. But just when you think the movie can’t possibly sink any lower, Jessica Biel in labor gives birth to twins. Out of her vagina pops the Blue Ray and DVD discs for Garry Marshall’s last movie “Valentine’s Day”. You’ve been sufficiently warned.
DVD Double Feature:
“New Year’s Eve” might possibly be one of the 10 worst movies I have ever seen. That gives Michelle Pfeiffer her second film on that basement list. Perhaps the worst film of all time is “Grease 2” which starred Pfeiffer singing about how she wants to fall in love with a cool motorcycle rider. The song lyrics are jawdroppingly awful like a bowling team singing about how they want to “score tonight” or a sex education class singing about “reproduction”.
Michael The Moviegoer
