New Year's Eve (12A)

Alison Rowat's Review

From the director of Valentine’s Day comes another sprawling, spot the star, ensemble rom-com.

Faces from Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer to Zac Efron, Ashton Kutcher and one of the crew from Glee turn up in various love stories connected by New Year’s Eve. De Niro gets the jammiest gig, lying in a hospital bed for much of the movie, while the rest plough their way through plot lines and jokes that never quite come off.

It’s like watching the world’s most expensive soap opera as characters, including a rock star played by Jon Bon Jovi (that must have been a stretch), come and go. You might have had duff Hogmanays in your time, but they were probably livelier than this.

Paul Greenwood's Review

An in-concept only follow up to Valentine’s Day, this hideous romantic comedy tracks what appears to be several thousand different characters on New Year’s Eve in New York.

It takes in births, deaths and marriages, with many of them orbiting Jon Bon Jovi, due to play a gig at Times Square where most of them end up gathering.

Returning players such as Jessica Biel and Ashton Kutcher take on entirely different characters from those in Valentine’s Day, while the likes of Robert De Niro, Halle Berry and Sarah Jessica Parker get roped into feeble situations constructed with the most flat and uninspired direction and acting imaginable.

With an alarming dearth of laughs when it’s not being cloying and obvious, it soon progresses from just being bad to active incompetence, made with a complete lack of care and attention.

The only remotely tolerable thread involves Zac Efron helping out Michelle Pfeiffer’s dowdy office worker, but they’re forced too frequently to make way for the rest of a catastrophe that makes Valentine’s Day look like His Girl Friday.