New Year's Eve 2011

Mary F. Pols, TIME Magazine: Neither nicely written, nor nicely acted nor nicely made. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: "New Year's Eve'' is fun in the way that eating at a buffet is fun. It's two hours of foods that have nothing to do with each other piled high on a plate because it was too cheap to resist. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Like the stroke of midnight, "New Year's Eve" disappears almost instantly, leaving little behind but limp streamers and the sense that, surely, there was a better party going on somewhere else. Read more

Stephen Holden, New York Times: The screenplay isn't written so much as assembled in carefully slotted little blocks, following the rules of a screenwriting textbook. Read more

Nathan Rabin, AV Club: It has plenty of plastic heart, but it'd be hard to imagine a film that took fewer chances, or more dogged pride in playing it safe. Read more

Kerry Lengel, Arizona Republic: It is the cinematic equivalent of a greeting card: Both the sentiment and the laughs are plentiful, cheap and forgettable. Read more

Jake Coyle, Associated Press: If there is some kind of world record for schmaltz, this may have set it. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Marshall knows a certain kind of comedy, but his technique has a way of pitting performers squarely against their own material. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: The film is like one of those Robert Altman big-canvas movies minus the inspiration. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: The only thing that can inspire more cynicism than a holiday's coerced emotions may be a film that both exploits and celebrates said emotions. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Written on the level of a bad episode of The Love Boat, this is one of those concoctions that intertwines about 10 storylines and then concludes with a cherry on top. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: A movie I often found myself laughing at in ridicule, and one that also gave me a lump in the throat. So I guess you could say I had a good time. Read more

Eric D. Snider, Film.com: An even lazier, even dumber re-hash of Valentine's Day - a movie that was already very lazy and dumb to begin with. Read more

Michael Rechtshaffen, Hollywood Reporter: The result proves to be as appealing and effervescent as a flute of flat champagne. Read more

Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: New Year's Eve is not unbearable. It's not bad, but it's not good, either. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: New Year's Eve is a perfect example of why the adjective "Hollywood" is so often used as a pejorative. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Should auld acquaintance be forgot? I don't know, but "New Year's Eve" sure should be. Read more

Linda Holmes, NPR: The only entertaining way to watch New Year's Eve is as a cruel experiment in which performers stranded with absolutely no script support are forced to subsist on pure presence, which quickly becomes a blood sport in which only a few survive. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: An inferior retread of Marshall's equally contrived "Valentine's Day," only dressed up with coats and confetti. Read more

Sara Stewart, New York Post: A soul-sucking monument to Hollywood greed and saccharine holiday culture. Read more

David Hiltbrand, Philadelphia Inquirer: This is more of a clown car than it is a movie. Read more

Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com: It's all perfectly pleasant and perfectly harmless and perfectly bland. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: How is it possible to assemble more than two dozen stars in a movie and find nothing interesting for any of them to do? Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Director Garry Marshall follows last year's Valentine's Day with New Year's Eve where an all-star cast lines up to collect paychecks - at our expense! Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: What can be said about a movie that is nice and awful? That has a warm spirit and is 100 percent phony? That has all the stars in the galaxy and all the appeal of rotting fish? Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The movie plays like a time warp to 1951. The opening shot of the movie is a horse and buggy. Jon Bon Jovi plays pop music's hottest superstar. You half expect the actors to pass a kissing booth or an organ grinder with a leashed monkey. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The sanitized setting and sappy script are so littered with cardboard characters and crass product placements that you'll mourn for the muggers and porno theaters that De Niro cursed in "Taxi Driver." Read more

Dave McGinn, Globe and Mail: This New Year's Eve leaves you feeling like you've got no one to kiss at midnight. Read more

Alonso Duralde, TheWrap: None of the marquee names come off particularly well here, so it's more a matter of figuring out who embarrasses themselves the most. Read more

Linda Barnard, Toronto Star: We hope that somewhere amid the streamers and popping champagne corks director Marshall is making a resolution to stop making these movies. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Why bother with a new title? New Year's Eve is simply 2010's Valentine's Day all over again, and it's about as appealing as a flute of cheap Champagne left over from the last holiday. Read more

Andrew Barker, Variety: Offering around a dozen barely there, aggressively agreeable mini-stories spliced together and spit out with lawnmower-style eloquence, the film is pushed to punishing lengths by the engorged cast list. Read more

Melissa Anderson, Village Voice: Mayans might have predicted the end of the world in 2012, but could they have known that the countdown to eternal hellfire would begin with Garry Marshall's New Year's Eve? Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: Sags when it should shimmer, labors clunkily when it should glide and - most unforgivably - plops some otherwise attractive and even talented actors into roles that are completely outside their physical and psychic comfort zone. Read more