'New Year's Eve'

Why oh why does Hollywood produce movies like 'New Year's Eve'? You know the type. Gather a cast of stars celebrities 'du jour' sufficient to fill a double-decker bus and match them up in supposedly humorous, heart warming and suspenseful vignettes. Garry Marshall did it in 'Valentine's Day' last year and tries it again here. Marshall even re-uses stars celebrities like Jessica Biel, Hector Elizondo and Ashton Kutcher from the earlier movie, albeit as different characters.

The formula remains the same. Create a patchwork of occasionally intersecting stories that cover the gamut from A to Z or in this case from birth through regeneration to death and leave it to the stars celebrities to generate sparks to ignite the audience. The only problem is that most of them do not spark either individually or in their assigned pairs.

Kutcher and Lea Michele make for as dull a coupling as you could imagine whilst the pairing of Zac Efron and a glammed-down Michelle Pfeiffer does not work at all. Robert De Niro must have smiled all the way  to the bank for his scenes - all but one - filmed in a bed. They probably took no more than a day or two to complete. Sofia Vergara at least shows some signs of life whilst Jon Bon Jovi was the highlight for me but only because he fills his jeans so spectacularly well.

The film is not particularly humorous. It's 'heart-warming' moments left me feeling icky very much in the way I used to feel as a young man in the moments immediately after ejaculating over myself. The suspenseful moments are not particularly thrilling although one relationship is quite nicely concealed until the end 'reveal'.

It doesn't say much for the movie that it's best and only sustained moments of entertainment come at the closing credits which comprise bloopers and excised moments of cast playfulness. This film may well have departed Sydney screens by the time we reach it's titular event, only three weeks away.