Ashton Kutcher and Lea Michele in New Year's Eve
A star-studded cast has to shine somehow, right? But even with 18 name brands appearing on the screen, New Year’s Eve has proven to be quite a hangover for critics, who’ve called out the film’s halting plot, boring cast, trite dialogue – well, pretty much everything in the movie managed to be torn apart in reviews, earning it a pitiful 6% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But don’t trust the numbers; here are the seven worst critiques of New Year’s Eve.
- Clearly the busiest writer on this project was whoever was signing the checks. – Stephen Whitty, The Star-Ledger
- New Year’s Eve is a depressing two-hour infomercial pitching Times Square as the only place in the universe you want to be when the ball drops at midnight on Dec. 31. (Believe me, it’s not.) – Stephen Holden, New York Times
(READ: Who’s in New Year’s Eve the Most?)
- New Year’s Eve is a dreary plod through the sands of time until finally the last grain has trickled through the hourglass of cinematic sludge. How is it possible to assemble more than two dozen stars in a movie and find nothing interesting for any of them to do? – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
- Early in the film, Pfeiffer falls into a rancid pile of garbage. I can’t think of a better metaphor for the movie, which leaves a stink on everyone associated with it. – Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
- 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? – Melissa Anderson, Village Voice
- This nice old gent [director Garry Marshall] seems content with trying to make nice pictures about nice days and nice things, like reconciliation, serendipity and love. Except the slapdash New Year’s Eve is neither nicely written, nor nicely acted nor nicely made. – Mary Pols, TIME
- Most insulting of all, the filmmakers insist on inserting bits of moralizing in the movie like so many razor blades in a candy apple, so that midnight in New Year’s Eve can’t just be about romance and giddy anticipation, it has to be about “forgiveness,” “second chances” – oh, and “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,” another fine Warner Bros. product opening soon in a theater near you and prominently cross-promoted in the movie’s Times Square sequences. – Ann Hornaday, Washington Post