Sunday 30 December 2012

Film Review: New Years Eve


About the film
New Year's Eve is a romantic comedy film that was released at the cinema on 8th December 2011. After looking on Amazon, it seems that the DVD and Blu Ray release is on 12th December of this year. The film is rated 12A due to some sexual references and the film has a run time of 118 minutes.

Plot
Set in New York City, New Year's Eve follows several people and how the day affects them. Kim is a single mother who still thinks of her daughter, Hailey as a child who wants to go out with a boy so that she could kiss him at midnight. Claire is in charge of the city's annual tradition, the ball drop on Times Square and when something goes wrong she has to ask an electrician, who was fired, to come and fix it. Laura, a chef who is catering the New Year's Eve party for a Ingrid is a woman who works at the record company, after having a near death experience decides to quit her job and asks a young messenger, Paul to help her fulfil her resolutions. At a hospital, Stan is a man who is in the final stages of cancer and we also see the birth of the first babies of the New Year. These are just a few of the characters we get to meet in this film.

What I thought
I was quite the fan of Valentine's Day and He's Just Not That Into You so I thought I would be quite safe watching this film because it is obviously done in the same kind of format. Films like these always have an amazing cast and this one is no different. The cast list is one of the things that make me want to watch these films as I like seeing how they all interact with each other. Even though New Year's Eve does have a great cast, they aren't all used to the best of their ability.

One of these in particular is Sarah Jessica Parker who plays Kim. Kim is a costume designer for a musical but she is so dowdy and boring herself that I just didn't believe it. Parker is most famously known for playing New York trend setter Carrie in Sex in the City and although this character is a contrast, it is not a good one. Parker was very unbelievable and uncharismatic. Her character was bland and Parker's acting matched this perfectly. There was no spark that she gives to Carrie and I was quite disappointed with this aspect of the film. 

Not everyone is bad though thankful. Michelle Pfeiffer plays Ingrid, another dowdy character who hates her job and has a near death experience at the beginning of the film. Pfeiffer has the ability to play any role she is given amazingly and she certainly did this with Ingrid. It didn't matter that the character came across as boring and quite sad because Pfeiffer gave her that something extra which made her really interesting. It was nice (and a little strange) to see her opposite Zac Efron though although the pairing and their storyline worked really well.

The main problem with this film is that there are just too many characters. Similar films have done the same kind of thing but with a smaller cast and I think this works a lot better. Due to having so many characters, none of them get nearly enough screen time. Only a couple get enough time for us to actually care about them and to care how they spend their New Year's Eve. For the most part, the characters are extremely underdeveloped and I would have much preferred for them to be cut in half, or at least down a little bit. What New Year's Eve ends up being is a mish mash of stories that I just didn't care about for the most part.

Also, as there are some quite good comedy actors in here, I expected this film to be a lot funnier than it was. Katherine Heigl gets a few good lines which were actually funny but everything else was either forced or clichéd. Even Ashton Kutcher isn't funny in this one and I have loved him in everything else I have seen him in. Because of the lack of comedy, and also a lack of real romance, I don't even know what to describe this film as or what genre it should be placed in. It doesn't seem to fit properly anywhere.

As you can see, I really didn't enjoy this film very much even though I thought I was going to love it. A massive disappointment.

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