New Year's Eve: Worst Holiday Ever
Here's a new full-length trailer for the upcoming ensemble romcom New Year's Eve, director Garry Marshall's second attempt, after the catastrophe that was Valentine's Day, to tap into Love Actually's sprawling charm. Yuck.
I mean, very much yuck, yes? It's been clear since this movie was just a glimmer in Marshall's eye that it would be tremendously bad, much in the same way as Valentine's Day, in that none of its romance will ring remotely true or authentic, every situation seeming incredibly strained — people don't act that way! romance doesn't work that way! — and flimsy and lazy in the pursuit of cheap laughs. I mean, remember Anne Hathaway as a phone sex operator? Valentine's Day was as if every scene in Love Actually was about Colin, God of Sex and not, like, Emma Thompson's "Both Sides Now" breakdown or Hugh Grant's stuttering wonderfulness.
The one thing that New Year's Eve has going for it over Valentine's Day is that New Year's Eve is actually a holiday that people care about. Valentine's Day is mostly commercial silliness, not the grandly meaningful holiday that miserable movie tried to pretend it is. But yes, people want to be kissed at midnight on New Year's Eve, or at least feel like they're having some grand evening. So maybe this movie will benefit from some of that genuine energy.
Or maybe it won't. From the brief glimpse here it looks as though there's a contrived mini bottle episode with Lea & Ashton stuck in an elevator, a Michelle Pfeiffer bit about someone who clearly places too much manic importance on New Year's resolutions, a whole thing with Jessica Biel and competitive birth-giving, Hilary Swank as the mayor of New Year's, and Abigail Breslin as a teenage girl who pulls up her shirt in the middle of Grand Central Station and yells "This is not a training bra!" to her mother, because yes, that's what a teenage girl would do, that is so very true to life. So... none of that bodes terribly well. I mean, it just bodes terribly.
Anyway, see you there!