"New Year's Eve" Throws Pfeiffer in the Trash
Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 11:30AM The headline may be provocative but it's unfortunately (and literally) true. To my great distress veteran director Garry Marshall has decided to throw Michelle Pfeiffer in the garbage in a scene from the all star "comedy" New Year's Eve (2011). Here she is filming in NYC.
Sigh.
Honestly Mr. Marshall, this just seems like asking for trouble. If you make jokes involving movie stars and garbage, aren't you daring the reviews to write themselves? It's not like the star-studded lead-in Valentine's Day (2010) was a critical darling!
And if you're going to cast Michelle Pfeiffer why do you want her drabbed down? I hate it when they make her mousy. She looks better than this just walking around with her husband without a team of makeup artists handy. Mousy Michelle is not what audiences come to see. There better be a makeover moment later in the film.
New Year's Eve, which like its predecessors charts the intertwining lives of several couples and singles throughout a holiday, has a couple dozen stars in it including other big names like Hilary Swank, Julie Andrews, Halle Berry, Sarah Jessica Parker, some TV biggies (Sofia Vergara, Lea Michele) and many more but apparently La Pfeiff is paired with a bike riding Zac Efron somehow (mother/son? fateful strangers?)
I can't decide whether I should be happy to see her onscreen again on December 9th or dread the very likely probability that she is adding another terrible movie to her weirdly haphazard filmography.
On that note the actress herself has generously demonstrated this How I Feel / How I Wish I Felt conundrum for me.
When thinking about this movie, which look best describes your mood: left or right?
Michelle Pfeiffer, New Year's Eve, Zac Efron, how I feel, on the set
Reader Comments (15)
I want to say it can't be any worse than Valentine's Day, but that sounds like a dare.
Oy. Michelle Pfeiffer. Why can't you get a movie that truly deserves and enriches you?
Jorge -- i think the secret is that she just has terrible taste in projects and the good movies are kind of llike accidents ;)
Terrible. I don't get it , she doesn't work for couple of years and then she comes back in this. Her agent must be her biggest enemy.
I don't understand the Valentine's Day hate. It was slight and unfocused, but I found it an overall charm, dismissable but harmless. I have to admit, when I heard there was a sequel in the works, I got excited, and these pictures don't change that. Know why?
Because Link Larkin and Velma Von Tussle are together again! Whoo!
I'm with Walter. Valentine's Day was fun. Compared to every Jennifer Aniston film we have to sit through, it was a fun rom com. I LOVED ANNE HATHAWAY. Taylor Swift gave me lols. Julia Roberts smiled and and nearly made it onto my Supporting Actress lift, oh that smile.
Bring on New Years Eve!
//Mousy Michelle is not what audiences come to see. There better be a makeover moment later in the film.//
I have to disagree, Nat. She was mousy in the first portion of Batman Return (which made her transformation into Catwoman particularly stunning), and these photos of her intrigue me - she IS 50-something, after all, and the brown hair brings back warm memories of her turn in Married to the Mob (although this will not compete with Demme's picture, quality-wise.)
I know you would prefer her to be back in great films (like the Fabulous Baker Boys - and trust me, so would I) but as you noted, she has terrible taste in projects. That, or she's too rich to care about whether she's taken "seriously".
The one on the left, unfortunately. If there's a sequel/rip off or anything to Black Swan, can anyone please cast her as Mila Kunis' mother? Or as Vincent Cassel's lover? Or just as Vincent Cassel's something... Sorry to go off-topic but I'm completely Black Swan-ed and I can't think of anything else.
"Compared to every Jennifer Aniston film we have to sit through"
Have to? Oh Keegan, what heinous crime did you commit to deserve that punishment?
God, I hate the look of this!!!!!
The one on the left.
It reminds me of one of Paul Rudnick's columns (when he was writing movie critiques/fantasia for Premiere under the pseudonym Libby Gelman-Waxner). Libby had a theory that whenever actresses wanted to play a working class woman, they had one shapeless gray/beige cardigan that they handed around to each other. I guess the modern version (no-one is interested in working class women anymore) is the shapeless boring beige (but expensive) piece Pfeiffer is wearing here.
absolutely right,Michelle deserves so much better,she needs her own devil wears prada!
Valentine's Day was abysmal. I really wish filmmakers would stop trying to recreate the magic that is Love Actually. It superbly written, elegently cast in every single role, soundtrack was pitch perfect (no pun intended). I would rather sit through 5 Aniston rom-coms than anything similar to Valentine, regardless of the cast. Frankly Marshall needs to just stop. He hasn't done anything decent since Beaches....don't get me started on Pretty Woman...UGH!
The best part of you is your Pfeiffer devotion. I want to cyber hug for loving an actress that causes you to feel like the only person in the world who gets it. As much as I hype and defend Kathy Bates it stems from my youth. I was eight when Misery came out – was damn near ten when I saw and fell in love with Fried Green Tomatoes.
As an adult–I’m falling more and more in love with Susan Sarandon.–I wannabe Susan Sarandon.
I don’t ever remember reading your thoughts on Michelle’s performance in The Age of Innocence? She’s my favorite part of a boring movie. How is it boring? I fell asleep and I have no resolution for her character. I naturally assumed she died because I liked her in the movie. Feel me in please.
You shouldn’t have to settle for Pfeiffer which doesn’t have a tier ranking because it’s beyond beneath. Gary Marshall has always been a shitty filmmaker. Can’t believe he helped Julia Roberts become a movie star in the perfect vehicle for her stardom.
This is totally Michelle's de-glam role, that plus overdue status and she is a lock for the Best Supporting Actress win at the Oscars :) One can dream anyway but stranger things have happened (hello, Whoopi for Ghost)