(December 20, 2011) -- Perhaps the most beautiful and crowd-pleasing place to be on New Year’s Eve is New York. Millions of people gather to watch the ball drop in the city that never sleeps. In the movie New Year’s Eve, director Garry Marshall follows seven couples as they get ready to ring in the new year. The movie includes an all-star cast: Halle Berry, Jon Bon Jovi, Robert De Niro, Zac Efron, Katherine Heigl, Ashton Kutcher, and Ryan Seacrest, to name a few. The only actors who I was surprised to see were Seacrest and Bon Jovi because they are more famous off the big screen.

The expertly written script presents the audience with themes of death, loneliness, happiness, birth and love. The movie starts off as one of those cliché Christmas movies that seek to teach us what the true meaning of Christmas really is, but then the film evolves into a heart-wrenching story that touches people of all generations. The main characters each have their own history with New Year’s Eve, such as having met their significant other, giving birth, saving a life, and breaking hearts.

Seeing as how the movie has actors  who have won Oscars, such as Robert De Niro and Halle Berry,the acting was very good and complemented the script.  I really enjoyed De Niro’s acting. He has a talent of making the audience experience every single emotion in one scene. During the film there were points when De Niro’s performance stunned the whole theater.

The script itself was well-written and complemented the actors very well, unlike many movies nowadays that have the actors complement the script. Also, the movie actually had a main theme, plot and idea, which is a breath of fresh air after all of the idea-less, theme-less, and plot-less movies made in the past decade. This movie should be seen as a classic because of its amazing cinematography and acting.

This movie represents a broad spectrum of people that span generations, such as a rebellious teenager, a party-hungry twenty-year-old, a twenty-something-year-old going through a midlife crisis, a major corporate vice president finding forgiveness within herself, and a dying Vietnam veteran who is learning that life is all about second chances. The movie will truly touch the heart of any moviegoer; it has touched over 4 million so far.

I would encourage people of all ages to go see this film because of its rich insight into the life of ordinary people each dealing with their own problems on New Year’s Eve in New York City. This movie surpasses most Christmas films by far and is a classic holiday movie because it presents interesting ideas and is not a clichéd holiday film.