Film Review: New Year’s Eve

Garry Marshall’s unwanted follow up to the pathetically odious Valentine’s Day – featuring a cast of anyone in Hollywood unlucky enough to have a gap in their schedule – not only retreads the previously employed formula of selecting a thoroughly worthless festival and implanting a Love Actually-lite multi-pronged narrative. Quickly and cheaply produced, with sub-Hallmark Channel production values and written with unimaginably low expectations of its audience. So low in fact that if one were to conjure a profile of the intended viewer, the resulting persona could only have been written by someone who holds humanity in total contempt. Made worse by the fact that the film intends to sucker you in with the promise of lighthearted entertainment. Only to pander shamelessly, fleece you and flip you the bird for being such a sap.

Obviously the film was shot alongside Times Square’s New Year celebrations in 2010, with posters for Judy Taymor’s The Tempest and Epic Mickey still on show. You’ll be confused for a while as to which New Year is being heralded. Once you realise that Times Square has been gradually digitally altered for the new year of 2012, the continuity errors become far more glaring as we lay our eyes on a billboard for Sherlock Holmes 2, as it miraculously appears in one scene to gravitate us within the current times. The neglect of continuity is one thing, the neglect of commonsense or reasonable judgement is another when your story doesn’t feature a single likeable or unique character. For example, a duelling pair of crowning mothers strive to deliver their baby before the other in order to win a cash prize. Such a predicament is a confirmation of the vapid and stupid calibre of this film’s sensibilities. The obvious outcome in which these two snivelling toads recognise their harebrained and selfish mistake is a horribly loathsome attempt at audience manipulation. Much like the inclusion of a dying, bedridden Bobby De Niro or Nurse Halle Berry rushing home to have an extra special Skype chat with her hubby, who just so happens to on active duty in the Middle East (‘let’s hear it for our plucky lads!’). The sympathy cards are dealt with its contempt for you so clearly in mind.

The writing and direction combine to produce something so insipid that it makes the work of Perez Hilton sound like Earnest Hemingway. Every line is crafted with Gossip rag-like vacuity, featuring this year’s crowning turd “may the best vajayjay win”. Or how about the countless character introductions in which the newly arrived schmuck will say something like ‘new year’s just isn’t my thing’, only later to learn the value of love at this wondrous time of year. Director/producer Garry Marshall, with his lazy camera work, shoddy blocking and lame story has succeeded in rendering himself as something beyond a witless hack. He not only has no comprehension of depth below the surface, but also struggles with the concept of surface detail.

The film is remarkably hard to watch given that it never dares to gross you out, then again this is probably a side effect of the fact that each scene is so lazily composed, and with each character and performance achieving sub-pantomime idiocy. Marshall must be a charismatic man to assemble the talent on display here. But if the film is anything to measure him by, then he fits the characteristics of a classical sociopath. An unassuming being able to wheedle his way into your trust, only then to manipulate and make a mockery of you whilst taking all he needs in your vulnerable state. Leaving you exploited, alone and humiliated. All in the knowledge that somewhere he is high-fiving himself on a chump well played. But even if this approximation is beyond hyperbolic and the man himself a ‘salt of the earth’ gentleman (who just so happens to be a sham), you can’t help but wonder what inspires him to do this. The drab sets and flat framing make this even more evident, not mention the film’s own reverence for itself. If you can stomach the obviously staged outtakes, you’ll spot the over-qualified Carla Gugino pulling two copies of the Valentine’s Day DVD and Blu-Ray from Jessica Biel’s nether regions. A cynical gag purporting to be self-reflexive, with only the intent of deliberately plugging the filmmaker’s previous work.

Hollow, overlong and utterly witless. An absolutely repulsive and pitifully saccharine exercise in box ticking cynicism in the pursuit of a quick buck. Displaying nothing short of a patronising contempt for what it wants from what it perceives as the lowest common denominator. Not only does the film think you’re stupid, it thinks you’re gullible too. The Worst Film of the Year has finally been crowned, it is granted the privilege of contemplating its wretchedness on its way to the stocks. Have your rotten eggs at the ready.