New Year’s Eve

Rating: **

In those hours leading up to the New Year,a lot tends to be forgiven and forgotten. However,casting De Niro as some kind of a Vietnam veteran dying of cancer,whose last wish is seeing the ball drop at Times Square,and Pfeiffer as a dowdy middle-aged-secretary-kind-in-frumpy-clothes hoping for a kiss of deliverance,has to count among the unforgivables. Pfeiffer spends the day being chaperoned by the smooth Efron,wearing unpardonable shoes and an unredeemable dress. And guess who gets a makeover at the stroke of midnight,complete with Cinderella-esque glass slippers? A certain miss Parker.

Bon Jovi gets to romance Heigl,sort of,since he is not the acting kind and she is in yet another role with a big chip on her shoulder. Swank is the vice-president of the Times Square alliance (yes,there is one such) whose entire career may depend upon whether a ball will drop when it must. Berry is the nurse looking after De Niro in his dying moments,and,of course,he is a cad who is dying alone in such a festive atmosphere. Kutcher in unkempt hair and beard is the requisite anti-New Year’s Eve guy,and Lea Michele a singer headed for Times Square that he gets stuck in an elevator with (a bench thoughtfully keeps them company). Parker is the divorcee raising the teen daughter played by Breslin (all grown-up since Little Miss Sunshine),while Peters and Vergara (from TV sitcom Modern Family) are the migrants with broken English who are Heigl’s support staff and the film’s comic factor. Did we forget someone? Oh yes,Biel is the pregnant woman in race with another pregnant woman for $25,000 if she can be the first to deliver at a particular clinic in the new year.

Marshall,director of Pretty Woman,but also last year’s other ensemble ennui Valentine’s Day,has an idea centring on hope and second chances,but perhaps convinced too many marquee actors to fall for it to manage them all in in one film. The end result is a movie that’s trying to justify each one’s presence peppered with pop psychology without appearing to care for any of them. Even a soldier somewhere sitting in a tent,with people flitting by in the background,“who will be back home soon”,is thrown in. Carla Gugini,a notable actress in her own right,is a doctor who does little except hold Biel’s hands and wait between her legs.

The star of the show is Times Square and the ball. It has been dropping for more than a century and has 3,000-plus lights in all,any one of which can fuse and the show can collapse. Each one of them has been a happy new year.

shalini.langer@expressindia.com