HOW BAD IS IT?! “New Year’s Eve”

Head of the UTG film department and mastermind behind Reasonable Remakes, Justin Proper has brought us another new edition of his no-holds-barred column. Ladies and gentleman, allow us to introduce you to: How Bad Is It?

Once a year the entire world sets aside their differences and comes together. For that one night, everything is put on hold as everyone looks towards the new year with hope for the future. People forget about their debt, their classes, and about all the stress in their life just to relax for a few hours and celebrate a new beginning. Sure, two days later everything is back to normal, but those few hours before and after the year rolls over are magical, and no one can deny that. Unfortunately someone is currently trying to ruin this festive night, not just for me, but for the world. His name is Garry Marshall, and he slapped New Years Eve in the face before swiftly kicking it in the nuts with his film, New Year’s Eve.

The Movie

New Year’s Eve is about a ton of different beautiful people sort of interacting on New Year’s Eve in New York City, New York. I say “sort of” interacting because the movie is a ton of different stories that sort of intersect at various points throughout the film. Kind of like Crash, only if Crash sucked, was really boring, and had no point to it’s many, MANY storylines. The film stars (and I use that word loosely) around 20 A-list celebrities doing their best to act like the script has heart, (yet not a single performance is terribly noteworthy). Some of these brilliantly written stories include: The increasingly unattractive Katherine Heigl as a chef who dates a rock star (a role that truly stretches the acting chops of Mr. Bon Jovi), Michael Kelso portraying a jaded hipster stuck in an elevator with a soon-to-be-forgotten girl from Glee, and Robert DeNiro dying while that chick who was topless in Swordfish plays his nurse.

"Hey Robert, remember when you and I picked roles because of the script and not the paycheck? Yea, me either."

(SPOILER ALERT) Eventually the ball drops (oh yeah, that almost doesn’t happen due to an absurd storyline that was not believable in the slightest) and everyone’s stories wrap up with a happy ending. Glee girl sings Auld Lang Syne (and thats not the first, or last musical number in the movie) and everyone is happy with all the stories finally coming together or ending or whatever you want to call it (I’d call it finally reaching their pointless conclusions).

"Don't worry, honey, it will all be over soon."

There was a group of people laughing in my theatre, and I took to twitter post-viewing to discover there are some people out there who think this film isn’t half bad. The critics, however, are not those people. As it turns out, neither am I.

How Bad Is It?

I knew this movie would be bad, but I had no idea it would be nearly as bad as it was. I thought it was a statistical improbability that a movie could have this many characters and storylines, yet still fail at holding one’s attention, but New Year’s Eve proved me wrong. I constantly found myself thinking “Oh yeah, I completely forgot about those guys,” even after the halfway point of the film. I don’t understand how every single character and plot could be so forgettable.

Aside from the main characters, there were many other celebrity cameos, none of them living up to their star’s ability. I don’t know which was worse: Matthew Broderick playing a quick role as a Mr. Buelerton (to which I said “What the fuck…” loud enough for the whole theater to hear) or John Lithgow playing a record executive that wasn’t funny.

How could they make this man unfunny!?!?

In all seriousness, all of the actors in this movie should be embarrassed and disappointed with themselves. The only thing that died quicker than DeNiro’s character was my hopes of laughing at any point during the movie. I don’t know what made real thespians agree to this (probably a paycheck), but it’s a disgrace to their craft.Honestly, the best part of the whole thing was when Bon Jovi was flying around in black in white wearing a frilled leather jacket.

Full disclosure: I got so bored I watched Bon Jovi music videos on my phone.

So how bad was it? I wish I had a time machine so I could go back to last New Year’s Eve and make my resolution never see New Year’s Eve in the first place.

P.S. I know you all were waiting for this joke, but I thought it was just too easy to say that any Oscar War Horse wins should be revoked after seeing that horse’s performance in New Year’s Eve.

Justin Proper is currently perfecting a way to get rid of a winter cold by using hate generated on the internet, so please let him know how much you hate him on Twitter here so he can power his health machine.

James Shotwell
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4 Responses to “HOW BAD IS IT?! “New Year’s Eve””

  1. the enigma says:

    You win the internet with the horse crack.

  2. Your says:

    Reminds me of Valentine’s Day. “Lets cram as much as we can with any big-to-semibig actors we can get, give them their own story, and link them with the security of a paper lip and call it a movie. BRILLIANT!

  3. you know what could have tied all those crappy plots together? zombies. ^.~ sounds like a horrible movie though.

  4. WIBeachBum says:

    Saw this film tonight. It’s just one of those movies that is plain FUN. Not an Oscar winner, not very deep- and it’s not trying to be. It just wants you to have FUN. How could someone not laugh and smile all the way through this entire film?! And Mr. Buellerton? I laughed aloud. That was hilarious.