Review: New Year's Eve

Physics class is all about learning formulas to apply to solve problems, and repeating them. Writer Katherine Fugate teams with formula pro Garry Marshall to do just that with the romantic comedy New Year's Eve, opening this week.

The feel-good comedrama follows the same formula as last year's chick-flick Valentine's Day. Step One: Pick a holiday. Step Two: Gather together as many stars as possible who owe you favors and pair them up in little stories loosely related to each other. Step Three: PROFIT. Expect to see more of these each year around Thanksgiving Day, St. Patrick's Day, Flag Day ... as long as there are holidays left to exploit.

New Year's Eve was a crowd pleaser, which is of course like saying "People like french fries." They're not any good for anybody, but we still eat them up. In spite of myself, I did find I enjoyed the film somewhat. I just won't find it memorable enough to ever want to revisit it. This is why I would consider it on one level a failure. The movie wanted to be for New Year's what A Christmas Story is for December 25. It tried to show every facet of life in the city on New Year's Eve and the preparations involved, but it could never achieve the timeless feeling of that classic. Nor does it ever reach for that kind of laughter.

There's little more to say. New Year's Eve includes a couple of songs from Jon Bon Jovi with Glee's Lea Michele singing backup. Michele also delivers the most beautiful version of "Auld Lang Syne" that I've ever heard.

There really are too many stars to list. I counted 28 recognizable names in the IMDb credits. None really stand out, though I did enjoy the May-December pairing of Zac Efron and Michelle Pfeiffer. Their scenes were the best in New Year's Eve, but weren't enough to carry the rest of the film, which needed to take itself a little less seriously and go for a few more laughs.