NEW YEAR'S EVE Review

From the creative team that cooked up Valentine's Day comes New Year's Eve, another holiday-themed ensemble comedy that reminds me of a very old joke: "He thought he was a wit, but he was only half right."

Director Garry Marshall has pieced together a movie that looks like a sitcom, reflecting his roots in television shows of the 60s and 70s. New Year's Eve is filled with characters who are no deeper than their names -- "Stan's Doctor," "Nurse Aimee," and "Caring Teenage Girl" are three that I plucked off IMDB. It's clear that the audience is expected to recognize the actors and allow their memories of that actor to fill in the blanks.

Thus, when we see an unshaven, mournful-looking Robert De Niro lying in a hospital bed, we immediately know that he's dying, bravely, and just wants to hang on long enough to see the Times Square ball drop ... one more time. And when we see Halle Berry dressed as a nurse, we know that she's a kind, self-sacrificing woman who will give up her own plans for the evening without complaint so she can keep De Niro company.

Likewise, when we see Hilary Swank as the boss with one responsibility -- to make sure that ball drops -- we know the ball will run into mechanical difficulty and that she'll sweat bullets to make sure it happens ... just in the nick of time.

Having sized up the three Academy Award-winning members of the cast, it feels pointless to recount the actions of the rest of the characters, played by the likes of Sarah Jessica Parker, Katherine Heigl, Michelle Pfeiffer, Zac Efron, Ashton Kutcher, Jessica Biel, Seth Meyers, Jon Bon Jovi, Abigail Breslin, and Josh Duhamel. The set-ups are blandly obvious, a series of concoctions to make it easier for one to four stars to act out their episodes in isolation, which can then be cobbled together on the "one night" holiday framework.

The real problem is not the lack of originality in the script by Katherine Fugate, it's the absence of sparkling dialogue, as well as the abundance of dull interactions between actors with no sparks between them. You can't manufacture chemistry; it's either there or not. Richard Gere and Debra Winger reportedly hated each other during the filming of An Officer and a Gentleman, but they had amazing chemistry, burning up the screen with sensual intensity.

The opposite is true here. Couple after couple gamely deliver their lines with as much zeal and energy as they can muster (not much, in many cases), and line after line falls flat.

It's a relief to see all-too-brief appearances by Larry Miller and Hector Elizondo, who almost wake the movie up; the old jokes -- an old lady s-l-o-w-l-y dragging an elevator gate closed -- work the best, though the funniest line in the movie is delivered as an outtake by De Niro during the closing credits.

The outtakes show the cast having a good time, and I bet the wrap party was a ton of fun. New Year's Eve might have been better if they'd simply filmed that and let the cast make fun of each other for 90 minutes.

At least then we'd all have been in on the joke and might have laughed a little. As it is, the movie is as generic and unfunny as its poster, premise, and title.

New Year's Eve opens wide across the U.S. tomorrow.