New Year's Eve

From the same people who brought you Valentine's Day, just in case you couldn't tell, Gerry Marshall takes another holiday that is always completely blown out of proportion, slaps together a bunch of A-listers, and creates as many shallow characters with inconsequential plot lines as possible and calls it New Year's Eve. It is the exact same movie.

Want any more proof that this is the exact same movie; they cast some of the same actors and just gave them different names. That's right we are led to believe that in this universe where everyone is three degrees away from everyone else on holidays there are two people who look exactly like Ashton Kutcher and Jessica Biel on both sides of the country. Didn't you learn your lesson from the first movie; I know you didn't do it for the money because Chuck Lorre and CBS are literally throwing money at Ashton to keep their sitcom alive. Maybe it is just a fun movie to do and I assume the schedule is super flexible because they only need you for like two weeks of shooting.

We could go over all of the plot lines but added up I doubt any story gets more than twenty minutes of screen time so there is no way to make any kind of connection to the story which is probably for the better. All of the clichés you can imagine make it into the movie people get stuck in an elevator, running into an ex, first kisses, bucket lists and obviously the New Year’s Ball breaks and there is concern it may not drop on time. It doesn't really matter who stars in which role as you can just throw in any actor to be any character, as they did with Hallie Berry, it is that nondescript. Some of the more ridiculous moments feature a dying Robert De Niro trying to get to the roof of the hospital and Hilary Swank talking on National News about being nicer to people or some shit.

The movie studio involved is Warner Brothers who take a laughable amount of screen time to pimp out their next movie Sherlock Holmes which comes out next week. This movie is also brought to you by the fine people of Nivea. Nivea: Touch and Be Touched. As you can see their product placing skills even made it into my review, well done.

The best part of the movie was the ending, not only because you could finally leave but because there are some actually genuine moments in the outtakes where the actors were allowed to have a little fun on screen. This is the attitude and style the movie should have been made in, not whatever was happening on the screen.

There really is no reason to see this movie, for those of you that saw the first one in theaters you should still be shaking your head at that decision. At its absolute best the movie is hokey and at its worst it is laughably trite. I would say it is a bigger let down than the actual holiday but there was no way the expectations were all that high. F

Charlie St. Cloud

Zac Efron is doing all he can to be taken seriously after his High School Musical phase, and he has taken steps in the right direction. Such as Me and Orson Welles which was an under appreciated movie that didn't have a broad appeal. His resume now shows that he can be artsy and bring in the female tween demographic. With Charlie St. Cloud I think he tries to reach a slightly older audience. While he may reach that audience the message he brings is utter shit.

Efron plays a young sailing phenom who seems to have the world at his feet until his brother dies in a car crash. Through the first 15 or so minutes of the movie I just kept asking myself when this kid was gonna get it. While the kid, played by newcomer Charlie Tahan, does an amicable job with the role he probably hitched his horse to the wrong wagon. Don't be surprised if this kid goes the way of short-round, you know without the hit film.

Anyway after the crash Charlie loses it and believes that he can talk to dead people including his brother, they have a standing date to meet everyday at sunset to play catch. After five years presumably the guilt gets old and in walks old rival and new boo Tess. Now he faces the difficult decision of carrying around his guilt or getting his dick wet, tough choice.

The writers for this movie most have been pissed when they found out that Efron only knows how to play sad one way. The cinematographer was able to help fill in the gaps as there are seemingly endless ways to film Efron getting wet and having to take his shirt off.

The movie also features a glimpse of Kim Basinger and Ray Liotta but they do the right thing and get their paychecks and run. Efron will be a Hollywood star to trifle with but not until he starts picking better scripts. D