New Year’s Day | Little White Lies

New Year’s Day

08 Dec 2011 / Released: 09 Dec 2011

Two individuals, a man and a woman, engaged in a conversation in front of a graffiti-covered wall.
Two individuals, a man and a woman, engaged in a conversation in front of a graffiti-covered wall.
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Anticipation.

Based on Valentine’s Day alone, the auspices aren’t good. Based on the cast, they’re even worse.

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Enjoyment.

The zipping from one plot strand to another only adds to the general irritation, and the third act is a real drag.

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In Retrospect.

Nothing wrong with an unashamedly sentimental holiday flick, but this is awful.

Nails-on-a-chalk­board char­ac­ters and manip­u­la­tive heart­string-yank­ing leave you des­per­ate for mid­night to strike.

What bet­ter way to cel­e­brate the dawn of a new year than by watch­ing an ency­clo­pe­dic selec­tion of A‑listers play some of the most irri­tat­ing char­ac­ters you’ll see onscreen for the next 365 days? From shrill (step up, Sarah Jes­si­ca Park­er and Kather­ine Hei­gl) to plank­ish (Jon Bön Jovi, Josh Duhamel) to what-are-you-even-doing (Robert De Niro), there’s some­thing here to set everybody’s teeth on edge.

In the mould of direc­tor Gar­ry Marshall’s 2010 behe­moth Valentine’s Day – or more gen­er­ous­ly Love Actu­al­ly – New Year’s Eve fol­lows a mul­ti­tude of cou­ples in the lead-up to the tit­u­lar hol­i­day, some mar­ried, some exes, some total strangers. Once you’ve recov­ered from SJP’s syrupy intro voiceover about the mag­ic of New Year’s”, you’ll spend the remain­ing run­ning time locked into an inter­nal strug­gle over which sto­ry­line you hate the most.

Take Hei­gl, play­ing against type as a man­ic, unlucky-in-love gal who’s sent into a whirl­wind of high-pitched resent­ment when a rock star for­mer flame (Bön Jovi) re-enters the pic­ture. Or Sarah Jes­si­ca Parker’s uptight, frumpy sin­gle moth­er (real­ly) who won’t let her daugh­ter grow up, or Michelle Pfeiffer’s drip­py work­er bee (seri­ous­ly) who just wants to expe­ri­ence life.

It’s not just that the sto­ries are paper-thin, painful­ly unfun­ny and revolve chiefly around Those Crazy Women and how they all need a bloke to set them back on an even keel – it’s that they rede­fine pre­dictabil­i­ty. Do you think Hei­gl and Bön Jovi might just make it up in time to kiss at mid­night? Will De Niro get his dying wish to see the ball drop from his hos­pi­tal rooftop?

On the plus side, Zac Efron pulls a Hugh Grant to sur­pris­ing­ly enjoy­able effect, ditch­ing his usu­al nice guy shtick for a sleazy wheel­er-deal­er type. There’s at least one gen­uine sur­prise to be had, too, in that the plot strand involv­ing Ash­ton Kutch­er is actu­al­ly the film’s least awful, thanks to his pair­ing with the gen­uine­ly charm­ing Lea Michele.

At a push, you might even enjoy De Niro’s bare­ly-phoned-in turn, not least for the iron­ic sense that in watch­ing him play a dying man, you’re wit­ness­ing the final death rat­tles of his career.

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