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Director Garry Marshall obviously loves his holidays. His last film, Valentine’s Day, followed approximately 400 different characters as they navigated the romantic grounds of that candy-filled holiday in February. Now, as a follow-up, he’s taking on more glitz and glamour in New Year’s Eve.
Like Valentine’s Day, New Year’s Eve follows a massive ensemble of New Yorkers as they prepare to ring in the new year. Caterer Laura (Katherine Heigl) is catering a huge, career-making party—at which her ex, pop star Jensen (Jon Bon Jovi), just happens to be performing. Teenager Hailey (Abigail Breslin) wants to go out with her friends, but her mom (Sarah Jessica Parker) expects her to stay home. In a hospital nearby, Stan (Robert DeNiro) is fighting to see the ball drop one last time, while expectant parents fight to give birth to the first baby of the year and take home the cash prize.
Meanwhile, in Times Square, Claire Morgan (Hilary Swank) is trying to manage the annual ball drop, but a last-minute technical issue has her scrambling. If she doesn’t get it fixed in time, she’ll ruin the event for billions of people around the world.
Of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg for this tangled mess of rom-com clichés and celebrity cameos. Like Valentine’s Day, New Year’s Eve is a flavorless stew of short stories about hopes and dreams and romance, all condensed and conveniently interconnected and mixed together until everything that may have made each individual story interesting or appealing on its own is completely stripped away. What’s left, then, are the most clichéd parts of the story: the over-the-top drama, the cheesy dialogue, the all-important change of heart, the predictable happy ending.
With so many snarled stories and so many characters tripping over one another, it’s difficult to care about any of them—especially since you’ll know from the start how each one will end. The performances, meanwhile, are completely overdone, as if each member of the cast were fighting to be seen and heard—to be noticed in the crowd.
In the end, the stories are supposed to make you believe in the good of humanity, the power of true love, the magic of the season. You’re supposed to believe that dreams can come true, that a dying man can get his last wish, that anyone can find true love on New Year’s Eve. And if you’re willing to forget every cliché from every romantic comedy you’ve ever seen, perhaps you’ll be able to walk out of the theater with a mildly warm-fuzzy feeling. But it’s all so clichéd and melodramatic that, instead of getting caught up in the holiday magic of it all, you’ll most likely just end up rolling your eyes at the sentimental sappiness of it all.
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