Character situations as predictable as the lighted ball coming down at midnight

New Year’s Eve ««½
PG-13, 117m. 2011

Cast & Credits: Hillary Swank (Claire Morgan), Michelle Pfeiffer (Ingrid), Zac Efron (Paul), Robert De Niro (Stan Harris), Halle Berry (Nurse Aimee), Jessica Biel (Tess Byrne), Seth Meyers (Griffin Byrne), Sarah Paulson (Grace Schwab), Til Schweiger (James Schwab), Carla Gugino (Spiritual Dr. Morriset), Katherine Heigl (Laura), Jon Bon Jovi (Jensen), Sofia Vergara (Ava), Ashton Kutcher (Randy), Lea Michele (Elise), Sarah Jessica Parker (Kim), Abigail Breslin (Hailey), Jake T. Austin (Seth) Josh Duhamel (Sam), Yeardley Smith (Maude), Hector Elizondo (Kominsky), Ryan Seacrest (Himself). Screenplay by Katherine Fugate. Directed by Garry Marshall.

My feelings about the film, New Year’s Eve, are the same feelings I get practically every year when this holiday comes around. If there is one holiday I don’t advocate celebrating it is New Year’s Eve. Dec. 31 is to me what Dec. 25 was to Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol before those three ghosts paid him a visit between the early morning hours of 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. Christmas morning.

To me, when you get right down to it, New Years Eve, the holiday, is nothing more than a petty excuse to go out and get plastered drunk with your friends or family. It’s a chance to watch whoever it is who now hosts the celebrations from New York’s Times Square as the lighted ball comes down at the stroke of midnight. I don’t even believe much in New Year’s Resolutions. Of course, I can address all this in a separate column later.

If there is one character I can identify with in director Garry Marshall’s all-star holiday who’s who celebratory follow-up to that other star-studded spectacle of his, Valentine’s Day (2010), it is apartment dweller Randy (Ashton Kutcher). When the film opens, Randy is not looking forward to the Dec. 31 celebrations due to happen that night at Times Square. As he pulls down his Christmas decorations, Randy replaces the “H” in “Happy New Year” to say “Crappy New Year.”

Like Randy, who starts out loathing this holiday, I started out loathing New Year’s Eve, the film. The movie reeks of so many predictable situations and character clichés that for much of the first hour my only interest was getting the behind the scenes look at the work Claire Morgan (Hillary Swank) must do to make sure the night’s festivities go as planned, which includes making damn sure that lighted ball drops at midnight or else it’s her ass.

Here is one example of how predictable the film is. As I watched one scene where Claire speaks to reporters as the lighted ball moved up the pole, I said to myself, “I just know that ball is not going to make it all the way to the top.” Sure enough, I was right. I couldn’t help but laugh watching newspaper reporters talk into their tape recorders or phone their stories in questioning whether or not the ball will really drop at midnight.

Screenwriter Katherine Fugate must have had a field day writing the screenplay doing her damndest to give over a dozen stars an equal amount of screen time to fill out a two-hour time limit. I’d love to read it one day just to see how each scene, especially in the first half hour, was written where every character or two are introduced in several different subplots. If TV Guide still published those thick small weekly publications before it got turned into the 8 ½ by 11 magazine out on stands today I could just picture the advertisement they’d run if New Year’s Eve aired on one of the big three networks on a Sunday night. I just know the ad would list all the stars along with their headshots. When TV Guide ran these types of ads, it was way back before the Internet was born and no one had access to 400 cable stations plus.

Along with Kutcher, the cast include Michelle Pfeiffer as an unhappy basket case who hasn’t lived her life to the fullest who asks a mail carrier (Zac Efron) to help complete all ten of her New Year’s Resolutions before midnight. Til Schweiger, Sarah Paulson, Seth Meyers and Jessica Biel play two married couples who are expecting on Dec. 31 and hope their babies will be born after midnight so they can win the $25,000 from the hospital. Katherine Heigl plays a known caterer and chef, who had a falling out with a rock star named Jensen (Jon Bon Jovi). Robert De Niro plays a dying cancer patient who wants to be able to see the ball drop at midnight one last time before taking his dying breath. Halle Berry plays his nurse.

Sarah Jessica Parker plays a divorced mom who doesn’t want her daughter (Abigail Breslin) celebrating New Year’s Eve with her friends. Josh Duhamel, on the other hand, is worried he might not make it to his company’s New Year’s Eve party in hopes of making an important toast. Lastly, I think, there is Glee’s Lea Michele as a singing groupie who gets stuck in an elevator with Randy.

Will the lighted ball finally make it to the top in time? Will Pfeiffer be able to complete all ten of her resolutions before midnight? Which two married couples will win that $25,000? Will the caterer and the singer finally get back together? Will the dying patient get that one last wish? Will the apartment landlord get the elevator working in time to let Randy and Michele out? Will Michele make it to the Times Square festivities in time to sing back up for Jensen or maybe for that matter, sing one of her own solos? Will Duhamel make it to the company function? What will Parker do if daughter Breslin sneaks out her window and heads downtown?

Such are the kinds of questions and predictable soap opera situations that arise throughout New Year’s Eve and I got to tell you, I wasn’t really surprised by any of the outcomes. Yet, by the time midnight came along, my attitude about the film, much like Kutcher’s Randy actually lightened up and found New Year’s Eve isn’t nearly as bad as I thought it might be. If the movie is about anything, it’s about a group of people coming together to not just look back on the year about to go by but to hope the one coming up will be better.

If New Year’s Eve, the movie, really wanted to be any less predictable, the filmmakers would have had the lighted ball not come down at midnight. Now that would have been something to watch if such a catastrophe were to happen. I just know heads would roll the next morning. The media would have a field day and I can imagine how upset New Yorkers, if not the whole country, would be if the ball didn’t come down.

©12/14/11