New Year's Eve

Michelle Pfeiffer. Robert De Niro. Jessica Biel. Sarah Jessica Parker. Hilary Swank. Ludacris. Halle Berry. Zac Efron. Lea Michele. More stars than on your average Christmas tree. And certainly more than this film deserves.

New Year's Eve is the latest offering from Garry Marshall, whose previous cinematic delights (cough, cough) include The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement and, crucially to this film, Valentine's Day. Now, anyone who has seen Valentine's Day will know what to expect with New Year's Eve as it follows the same style: a significant day is used as the backdrop for the personal and professional problems of various characters to be overcome. Last year, it was finding love. This year, it's a ball dropping. The main plot of the film is centred around Hilary Swank's character who is in charge of the New Year's Eve celebrations in New York's Times Square. She must, at all costs, make sure that the giant ball (which marks the start of the New Year and is apparently a big thing in the States) drops as the countdown to 2012 begins. Throw in some interweaving storylines and enough shots of Lea Michele singing to rival your average Glee episode, and you've got yourself the perfect film to end the year. Right? Wrong.

No words can describe how dire this film is. Fact. But I'm going to try anyway. First off, the characters are the most annoying bunch of people you're likely to meet. Their two dimensional, materialistic, shallow and totally defunct lives leave the audience totally apathetic to their situations which, quite frankly, are ridiculous. Take two of the 'branch-out' story lines. The first concerns two couples who are about to become parents. They hear that if their child is the first to be born in the New Year, they win $25,000. Now, any normal person would be happy enough with a healthy baby and mother, but no, these characters are more concerned with getting their hands on the cash. It doesn't matter if the mother feels pressured and anxious about being the fastest to give birth because, hey, it's all about the money. The supposedly 'emotive' and 'feel-good' ending to this pathetically sickening plot strand is enough to put you off the whole film. But no, there's more! The second vomit-inducing plot features Robert De Niro, who, it could be argued, did this film to pay the bills. He plays a dying Vietnam veteran, who wants to make it to the New Year, with supposedly no family to be with him during his final hours. It turns out (and this is not a spoiler because if you didn't see this coming, you really weren't trying) that Swank's character is his daughter. So, what do you do if your father has a few hours to live? Devote your entire time to making sure the New Year's Eve ball drops in Times Square of course! Never mind good old dad...

No-one, and I mean no-one, will enjoy this film. With more product placement than in an ad break for The X Factor, it is clear that the film is simply a commercial vessel, aimed at printing money at the expense of any artistic merit. Hilary Swank's 'inspiring' speech to the waiting crowds in Times Square was nothing short of farcical and raised more than a few chuckles in the audience I endured the film with. The last five minutes of the film, i.e. the bloopers, were the most bearable of the entire 118 minutes, during which time I had worked out exactly how to kill myself by using my ticket to paper-cut my wrists. New Year's Eve is so misjudged as a piece of film-making, so sickening and so superficially focused on sentimental drivel that it seems to be drowning in its own ghastliness. However, there is one redeeming feature. Should the NHS ever need an alternative to stomach pumping, showing patients this film will more than suffice. 

Clapperboard Rating: *