Sucking Every Last Drop of Fun & Joy From America's Favorite Drinking Holiday
Garry Marshall is the Michael Bay of rom-coms -- they both have hypnotized the moviegoing public into buying the vomit they regularly spew onto the big screen. At night, they lull themselves to sleep to the sound of their own sinister cackles.
Get this: Marshall was once given the Women in Film Lucy Award, a prize intended for females who have enhanced the perception of women in film and television. From all appearances Garry Marshall pees standing up, and his most famous movie is about a hooker who finds redemption via a rich dude's money.
Yeah, super woman enhancing Garry. I feel empowered. Thanks a million.
Marshall continues to empower ladies with a franchise (of sorts) that involves entangling storylines set on the most inconsequential holidays. The first was Valentine's Day, and now we have New Year's Eve. Next up? Word has it that the Arbor Day and Flag Day lobbies are neck-in-neck. Surprising when you consider the dollars behind Mothers Day.
As far as holidays go, I'll take New Year's Eve with a bullet: It's something everyone can enjoy and the only expectation is to get a little bit wasted and count backwards from ten. That's a pretty low threshold for fun, and I resent that Marshall has put so much effort into upping the New Year's ante.
Apparently, a quality New Year's Eve no longer means not getting barf in your hair -- it requires true love, family togetherness and some other squishy things. Also every famous person you've ever heard of. To make matters worse, the Most Terrible Place on Earth one could possibly be on New Year's Eve is at the very nexus of the action. Yes, ladies and gentleman, Times Square. Never great at any time, but especially not on New Year's, when a million souls (no exaggeration) are crowded into pens like feed-lot cattle with nary a port-a-potty or adult beverage to be found.
For eight hours, you cannot leave your corral -- not to go to the bathroom, to eat or to avoid a panic attack.
Welcome to my version of hell.
In that respect, New Year's Eve the movie could be a meta-commentary of New Year's Eve in Times Square: boring, rambling, complicated, pointless, annoying and, all the time, you know you'd be having so much more fun somewhere else.
There are no fewer than thirty (30) main characters, all played by famous people, so it would be pointless to go into any of the plot intricacies -- and man, are they ever intricate.
Suffice to say:
Hilary Swank and Ludacris work for the Times Square Alliance and are in charge of making sure the ball drops. Michelle Pfeiffer plays a secretary (yeah right) who quits her job and and befriends an age-inappropriate deliveryman, Zac Efron (psh). Sarah Jessica Parker is Abigail Breslin's mom; they have issues. Ashton Kutcher gets stuck on an elevator with Lea Michele, who is Jon Bon Jovi's backup singer. Bon Jovi's ex-girlfriend is Katherine Heigl. Robert De Niro is dying in the hospital and Halle Berry and Alyssa Milano are his improbably sexy nurses. Down the hall, Seth Meyers and Jessica Biel are about to have a baby.
That is only half of the intertwining A-list characters in this movie.
The most enjoyable and hilarious aspect of this movie (for me) is that Sarah Jessica Parker and Abigail Breslin live in Brooklyn, near the Broadway-Myrtle stop on the JMZ line of the New York City Subway. Haha, yeah right! I too lived there not so very long ago -- I could see the platform from my front door. I'm no hard ass, but I can tell you that Parker and Breslin would make in that neighborhood for about five minutes before they were mugged/harassed back into Manhattan where they belong.
Now that is a movie I could enjoy.
