New Year's Eve (Garry Marshall, 2011)

In the style of his previous film—which I thankfully did not see—Garry Marshall’s “New Year’s Eve,” depicts a series of stories about relationships right on the last day of 2011. With the help of a large ensemble cast of familiar faces, from Zac Efron to Robert DeNiro, Marshall delivers a tediously long game of Spot-the-Star. While the movie attempts to portray classic holiday love stories tied with the season’s sense of possibility, if my New Year were ever as boring and mediocre as Marshall’s film, I would immediately cease all further celebrations.

Some of the stories are slightly enjoyable. For example that of Ingrid (Michelle Pfeiffer), a shy secretary who quits her job and hires delivery boy Paul (Zac Efron) to fulfill a series of fantastical New Year’s resolutions before midnight. None of them, however, is decent enough to lift this clunky, dull, poorly scripted holiday bomb. “New Year’s Eve” upholds the [new?] Hollywood tendency that if you get enough A-listers in one room, you can forego the screenplay. Filmmakers need to remember that what made “Love Actually” such a fantastic holiday movie was its pitch-perfect screenplay and overall manufacture, and not its vignette structure.

Not Recommended (D)