Applause for ‘New Year’s Eve’
The New Year often serves as a scapegoat for mistakes and regrets from the prior year. All year people have been trying to outrun a mirror when all that mirror is doing is showing them a reflection of themselves.
New Year’s Eve is the night when that mirror turns into a magic mirror on the wall and all past slip-ups can be replaced with the memories of resolutions.
The film “New Year’s Eve,” released Dec. 9, 2011, celebrates the wishes and the pity of a new year. Garry Marshall directed and produced this movie about “intertwining stories told amidst the pulse and promise of New York City on the most dazzling night of the year.”
“I wish there would be more celebrities here than rehab.” Oh don’t worry Laura (Katherine Heigl), because this movie stars 18 celebrities. Along with Heigl, Halle Berry, Jessica Biel, Jon Bon Jovi, Abigail Breslin, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Robert De Niro, Josh Duhamel, Zac Efron, Hector Elizondo, Katherine Heigl, Ashton Kutcher, Seth Meyers, Lea Michele, Sara Jessica Parker, Michelle Pfeiffer, Til Schweiger, Hilary Swank and Sofia Vergara come together to create a film just like but much better than “Valentine’s Day,” also directed by Marshall.
In a movie with so many different characters it would be hard to show character development, but screenwriter Katherine Fugate did an applaudable job.
Randy(Kutcher) started out thinking New Year’s Eve was just an excuse for people who normally do not drink to go to parties and “turn all Kanye.” But after being stuck in an elevator with Elise (Michele) for half of the movie he comes to realize the joy of the New Year.
Another standing ovation storyline is one of Ingrid (Pfeiffer) and Paul (Efron). Ingrid starts as an insecure office employee who hates her job and, with the help of Paul, by the closing scene she has turned full circle by completing everything on her New Year’s resolution list.
The tear trigger came from Berry and Niro. Nurse Aimee (Berry) attended to her patient Stan (Niro) throughout the movie. Stan was an old man refusing to take medicine for his sickness. His last wish was to see the ball drop one last time so that all of his past mishaps could be forgiven before his passing.
Stan’s daughter Claire (Swank) was in charge of the ball dropping at midnight and right before the final countdown she left to the hospital to take Stan on the roof to see the glittering ball of forgiveness.
This romantic comedy was given some youth from Breslin who played Hailey, a young girl wanting to get her first kiss at midnight.
Not all storylines were great though. Sam (Duhamel) and Hailey’s mom Kim (Parker) met each other the previous New Year’s Eve and reunited for the first time since then.
Duhamel is in his high 30s while Parker is nearly a decade older. The chemistry between Sam and Kim does not drop the ball simply because their clear age difference is disturbing.
Perhaps the funniest synopsis came from Griffin (Meyers) and Tess (Biel). Griffin and Tess were a married couple trying to win cash money for having the first baby of the New Year.
Their rivalry between the pregnant women in the hospital also trying to win that money was hysterical. During one of the hospital scenes it looked as if the audience just saw the winning video from America’s Funniest Home Videos.
