There is a serious epidemic in the movie universe and that is the absence of quality romantic comedies aimed at women. That’s not to say there aren’t any good movies that are aimed at women but it seems that there are more ridiculously stupid movies aimed at women than there are intelligent ones.
Take for example, “New Year’s Eve”, which is a sort of pseudo sequel to “Valentine’s Day”, the 2010 movie with the same director, Garry Marshall; the same writer, Katherine Fugate and some of the same cast. None of this helps. As awful as “Valentine’s Day” is, they may be worse. And since when is “New Year’s Eve” considered a romantic holiday?
“New Year’s Eve” takes place on, yeah, you guessed it….New Year’s Eve in New York City. We are introduced to over a dozen story lines happening all over this city, some intertwining, some not. We get two couples vying to be the have the the first born NYE baby; the guy who has given up on the romanticism of New Year’s; the man dying in the hospital but wants to see the ball drop one more time; the guy who met the girl of his dreams last NYE and if fate is kind he is supposed to meet her again this NYE. I could go on but it’s just one cliche after another and none of them offer any surprises. In fact they are all about as contrived as you can get.
The one thing this movie has going for it is a solid cast including Robert DeNiro, Josh Duhamel, Halle Berry, Michelle Pfeiffer, etc. Of course it also features Ashton Kutcher, Sarah Jessica Parker, Lea Michelle, Katherine Heigl, etc. The point is there are so many actors in this that are recognizable, some good, some bad. It’s almost like they just tried to fit as many as they could within the budget. Some you will wonder what they are doing in such schlock, others you will wonder how they keep getting work.
“New Year’s Eve” isn’t a very good movie, in fact it’s not even close. For two hours it maintains a certain level of entertainment but the cold hard truth is that is silly and stupid and cheesy. You can almost tell they used a connect-the-dots kids activity book to write the predictable screenplay. It’s never interesting, it’s never romantic and it never does anything that is funny. Is this really what women want?
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New Year’s Eve trailer: