New Year's Eve, directed by Garry Marshall (Anonymous)

New Year's Eve has a giant cast of pretty cool actors. The lights of New York are awe-inspiring, and that is captured well in the film. Otherwise, I thought this movie felt uneven, and none of the actors were really given a chance to shine. 

The film is pretty much the same as Valentine's Day, but less charming. It even has some of the same actors, although they aren't playing the same parts. A myriad of people, somewhat entwined, are preparing for New Year's Eve celebrations across the city of New York. Robert DeNiro is appropriately touching, and I would love to see Hilary Swank get to act with him in another movie. That would be powerful! Michelle Pfeiffer is awkwardly dumpy in this film, which is a letdown 'cause she's a MILF, but she was entertaining as this sort of pathetic middle-aged woman. Zac Efron...what happened? He has a face like a baby, but he's supposed to be best friends with Ashton Kutcher- who looks like the bear wearing Kutcher's face in this movie- and Sarah Jessica Parker's brother? He looks like an adult in the trailers for The Lucky One, but in this movie I kept getting grossed out every time he hit on a girl, because he looks like a 12 year old, and talks like one too. Abigail Breslin is still adorable, even though she's definitely not a baby anymore. Expect big things from that one. Halle Berry gets to look sad for a while, even wihle wearing a sexy dress. We see Common and Alyssa Milano for about 45 seconds each- the producers shouldn't have bothered hiring names for those roles, because they didn't get to do anything. The girl who plays Rachel on Glee is in this, and she sings, because what else is she going to do. Her duet with Jon Bon Jovi (they're in separate places) is awful, not in small part because Bon Jovi has to be the worst actor ever to set foot on this planet. Katherine Heigl slapping him is hilarious even though that scene was in the trailer. Her two assistants were really funny- I'd like to see a whole movie about those two! Pretty much everybody else faded into the background. By far the most funny part is during the credits, when Carla Gugino is playing midwife to Jessica Biel's preggo lady, and as Biel seems to be giving birth, a DVD and bluray copy of Valentine's Day come out. Ha!

Basically, if you've already seen Valentine's Day, just watch Love Actually, the movie they're all stealing from.