In the thoroughly middling tradition of all-star games and Valentine’s Day comes the trailer for New Year’s Eve, another ensemble comedy from Garry Marshall starring as many famous people as it is possible to pay. With Michelle Pfeiffer, Sarah Jessica Parker, Halle Berry, Hilary Swank, Katherine Heigl, and, at the very last second, Robert De Niro in the cast, the trailer’s choice to focus on Josh Duhamel, his totally unidentifiable voice-over voice, and the burgeoning romance between Ashton Kutcher and Lea Michele seems a little odd — but, hey, maybe the idea of Ashton and Lea playing tonsil hockey doesn’t give someone, somewhere the heebie-jeebies. (If the trailer didn’t want to give more play to a very famous person, it might have considered zeroing in on the Hilary Swank and Ludacris pairing because at least that nonsense is inspired.) Also in the trailer, silly questions like, “How do you explain the entire world coming together on one night?,†Heigl slapping Jon Bon Jovi in the face, Jessica Biel and Seth Meyers (!) having a baby, Abigail Breslin getting more and more grown-up, less than half a second of Halle, and SJP in sad single “I make my own dresses but I don’t have anyone to wear them for!†mode. The only bearable moments come courtesy of Zac Efron, who gets to say “bro†like he knows how to do it and, for a blink, even dances. The other bearable moment, we can only assume, comes courtesy of Sofia Vergara, who is in the film but did not make barely made the trailer — lucky for her.
