New Year's Eve (Gary Marshall, 2011)

[tabuno]

It's too bad that Americans seem to have been duped into their search for either some artful, sophisticated film experience or some brainless high action thriller intensity, or some fancy special effect gimmicks in order to believe that they had a wonderful movie experience. Instead, Gary Marshall in his New Year's Eve as did its predecessor, Valentine's Day last year created another captivating and smart collage of separate storylines that however seem to tie together on these holidays resulting in a rousing emotional celebration of the human condition. Mr. Marshall has apparently learned from the weaknesses in Valentine's Day and produced an even better movie with better editing, tighter storylines. Both these message movies have at their core simple but meaningful universal themes that I am at a loss to understand why film audiences would rather dumb themselves down with either high intellectual abstraction or mindless excitement. By overlooking the more meaningful and human elements of these both happy and sad moments in these movies, people are dehumanizing themselves from the everyday common reality of human exstence.