Not a bad ‘New Year’s Eve’

Ensemble casts can be tricky. A few top-billed actors can overshadow everyone else, and the sheer multitude of big stars just crowds the screen. There are attempts to make sure everyone has enough screen time, to involve their characters in the plot just enough to make them important, or to give them cameos that end up being the highlight of the movie, thus bulldozing over everyone else’s performances.

 

That was the first problem with Valentine’s Day. The ensemble cast meant a multitude of mini-plots, most of them forgettable. The forgettable mini-plots overshadowed the few good plotlines, and a few remarkable scenes upset what little balance the rest of the film had.

 

The second problem with Valentine’s Day was that it seemed to be trying too hard to emulate Love Actually, which was successful and heartwarming with its ensemble cast of British and American actors, delightful cameos and just the right amount of impossible and unusual match-ups. Maybe the fact that Valentine’s Day was set in Los Angeles and featured too many of the same stories as the British film was just distasteful to me.

 

So with New Year’s Eve being billeted as “from the producers of Valentine’s Day” and “the sequel to Valentine’s Day,” you can understand that my apprehension as I walked into the press screening was not unfounded. Still, I hoped to be surprised. 

 

With the same director and the same writer as Valentine’s Day, New Year’s Eve surprised me in its ability to bring quite a few tears to my eyes (my being a pusong mamon notwithstanding). I found myself genuinely cheering for some of the characters as the movie progressed. Rotten Tomatoes gave the movie a six percent rating based on 116 reviews, and Roger Ebert called it “dreary.” But I’ve always felt that Rotten Tomatoes was ridiculously unfair and harsh, and that feel-good holiday movies should be viewed as they are: a two-hour guilty pleasure that can make you laugh, cry or giggle, then you move on to your shopping in another part of the mall. Not a compelling movie, and not really a must-see, but if you’re dragged along to watch it, you would not be utterly bored.

 

For one thing, Sofia Vergara and comedian Russell Peters are always amusing to see on the big screen, and here they stole the show from the humdrum romance between chef Laura (Katherine Heigl) and predictable rock star Jensen (Jon Bon Jovi). The love-hate relationship that blossoms between the unlikely pair of comic book artist Randy (Ashton Kutcher) and singer Elise (Lea Michele) is another drag, and Kim (Sarah Jessica Parker) coming to terms with her teenage daughter’s (Abigail Breslin) independence is something many other holiday films have touched on as well.

 

Far more interesting is the mini-plot that features Nurse Aimee (Halle Berry), a nurse with a heart of gold, who takes care of cancer-ridden photojournalist Stan (Robert De Niro). De Niro seems like such a waste in such a role, and he seemed so uncomfortable with such cheesy lines. Cary Elwes’ unsympathetic portrayal as the doctor didn’t help either. Fortunately Berry seemed so sincere as Nurse Aimee that when that mini-plot is resolved you feel better not for Stan but for Aimee. The twist for Nurse Aimee toward the end of the movie tugged at my heartstrings and forged a link to one of the truly nice plotlines in Valentine’s Day.