New Year's Eve (2011 film)

Plot

On New Year's Eve, Vice-President of the Times Square Alliance Claire Morgan (Hilary Swank) is making the final arrangements for the ball drop with the help of her friend Police Officer Brendan (Chris "Ludacris" Bridges). Meanwhile, after being nearly run over by a car and denied a vacation, Ahern Records secretary Ingrid Withers (Michelle Pfeiffer) quits her job and offers the deliveryman Paul Doyle (Zac Efron) tickets for the Ahern Records Masquerade Ball if Paul helps her complete a series of New Year's resolutions before midnight, which he accepts.

Paul's sister Kim Doyle (Sarah Jessica Parker) is having trouble with her teenage daughter Hailey (Abigail Breslin) who wants to spend New Year's Eve with her friends and her boyfriend Seth Anderson (Jake T. Austin) in Times Square. Paul's friend, comic book illustrator Randy (Ashton Kutcher), who hates New Year's Eve after his girlfriend left him on a date, gets stuck in an elevator with Elise (Lea Michele), an aspiring singer who will be providing back-up for musician Daniel Jensen (Jon Bon Jovi) in his show at Times Square. He also prepares to perform at the Ahern Records ball, where he rekindles his feelings for his ex-girlfriend, Laura (Katherine Heigl).

At a nearby hospital, Stan Harris (Robert De Niro), a man in the final stages of cancer who refuses chemotherapy and who only wishes to see the ball drop one last time, is kept company by Nurse Aimee (Halle Berry) and Nurse Mindy (Alyssa Milano) after his doctor (Cary Elwes) reveals he will not last much longer. In the same hospital, a young couple named Griffin (Seth Meyers) and Tess Byrne (Jessica Biel) are about to have their first child, and they compete with another couple, James (Til Schweiger) and Grace Schwab (Sarah Paulson), for a bonus offered to the family of the first child born in the new year. Elsewhere, Sam (Josh Duhamel), a businessman from Ahern Records, attempts to go to the Ahern Records Ball, where he is to deliver an important speech, after his car malfunctions outside New York City, all the while wondering if he should attend a meeting with a mysterious woman he met and fell in love with on the previous New Year's Eve.

In the early evening, one of the LED panels on the Times Square Ball malfunctions, jamming the ball and forcing Claire to call Kominsky (Héctor Elizondo), an electrician who the company had fired a few weeks prior. Kominsky repairs the ball before midnight, and, in gratitude, Claire leaves him in charge of the operation, and rushes to see the ball drop with her father, Stan. Meanwhile, Nurse Aimee has a video conference with her husband Chino (Common), a soldier serving in Afghanistan. Stan passes away just after the ball drops and a chorus of Auld Lang Syne, with Claire holding his hand.

Paul helps Ingrid complete all the items on her list, and she gives him the tickets. Meanwhile, Randy and Elise bond, and, as they are about to kiss, the elevator is repaired by the building superintendent (James Belushi) and Elise rushes to Jensen's show. Randy notices she forgot her rubber band and rushes to give it to her. At Times Square, Jensen leaves midway during his show to return to the Ahern Ball to apologize to Laura, who accepts him back and leaves with the approval of Sam. With Jensen gone, Elise is called to replace him and attracts the attention of the crowd. She kisses Randy, and they start a romantic relationship.

Griffin and Tess have their baby and, although it is born first, they allow James and Grace to have the bonus after discovering they already have two other children to provide for. Meanwhile, after being forbidden from attending the celebration, Hailey runs away to Times Square, where she sees Seth being kissed by another girl. Heartbroken, she meets and is comforted by her mother. Seth finds them and apologizes, claiming the girl stole a kiss from him. Hailey forgives and kisses him. Her mother allows her to go to an after-party. Kim then goes to a restaurant to meet Sam, who had succeeded in delivering his speech. She is the mysterious woman he met one year prior, and they finally discover each other's names.

Critical reception

New Year's Eve was panned by critics. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 7% based on 135 reviews with an average rating of 3.1/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Shallow, sappy, and dull, New Year's Eve assembles a star-studded cast for no discernible purpose." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 22 out of 100 based on 30 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times said, "New Year's Eve is a dreary plod through the sands of time until finally the last grain has trickled through the hourglass of cinematic sludge. How is it possible to assemble more than two dozen stars in a movie and find nothing interesting for any of them to do?" Kimberley Jones of the Austin Chronicle said, "Mostly, New Year's Eve is appalling stuff, a poorly constructed, sentimental sham. Auld Lang Syne." Claudia Winkleman on the BBC One show Film said "I have found the worst film of all time, and it is called New Year's Eve." Rolling Stone shared the same opinion and gave a zero stars rating, stating "Director Garry Marshall follows last year's Valentine's Day romcom crapfest with an even more puke-up-able sample of the species" and concluding New Year's Eve is "bad beyond belief". British newspaper The Telegraph named New Year's Eve one of the ten worst films of 2011. British film critic Mark Kermode named it as the worst film of 2011. On the more positive side, Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman said, "New Year's Eve is dunderheaded kitsch, but it's the kind of marzipan movie that can sweetly soak up a holiday evening."

The film earned five Razzie Award nominations: Worst Picture, Worst Director (Garry Marshall), Worst Actress (Sarah Jessica Parker), Worst Screenplay and Worst Screen Ensemble, losing all to Adam Sandler's Jack and Jill.

Box office

The film opened at the No. 1 spot at the box office with $13.0 million. It made $54,544,638 in the United States and Canada, as well as $87,500,000 in other countries, for a worldwide total of $142,044,638.

Parodies

New Year's Eve, and its predecessor Valentine's Day, were parodied in December 2011 on the sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live in a trailer for the fictional film The Apocalypse, set on the last day on Earth. They were similarly parodied on the TV show 30 Rock, in the January 2012 episode "The Ballad of Kenneth Parcell", in a trailer for a film called Martin Luther King Day, whose large cast includes Jenna Maroney.