Oh look, it’s Ashton Kutcher again. But that’s OK, he has great hair. Suddenly I have two movies to watch with Ashton Kutcher, along with a nice variety of extremely famous actors and actresses such as Hilary Swank, Robert De Niro, Zac Efron, Ludacris, Jessica Alba, Taylor Lautner, Taylor Swift and a handful of others.
At first I wasn’t so excited about watching all of these people. Although these movies have people I absolutely love, it’s not exciting when a director throws a bunch of famous people into a movie with a story that has no validity and a few too many clichés.
These were my premeditated feelings about “New Year’s Eve” and “Valentine’s Day,” two movies with the same director, Gary Marshall, and a similar cast.But sometimes feelings change.
The first movie I watched was “New Year’s Eve.” At the window while pulling the money out of my wallet I thought to myself I reeeaally don’t want to pay to watch this movie when I could be spending this on something more useful… a new item for my wardrobe perhaps. Then I watched it. To my surprise I liked it.
Although there was a huge pool of famous, gorgeous faces, each main character had their own story and purpose. The one scenario that was probably my favorite was between Zac Efron, who plays Paul, and Michelle Pfeiffer, who plays Ingrid.
Paul helps her achieve her New Year’s resolutions that seem impossible to do in one day, things such as going around the world, saving a life, etc. Despite some of the cheesy lines, each scenario has its own meaning. In this case I found the message to be sometimes people shouldn’t doubt themselves but allow their creativity to take over and help them be someone they usually aren’t, even if it’s just for one day.
The same goes for “Valentine’s Day,” which is my preferred movie out of the two. Kutcher plays a character named Reed Bennett. Bennett proposes to his girlfriend Morely Clarkson, played by Jessica Alba, at the beginning of the movie.
Right away I’m thinking here goes another cheesy romantic comedy, but once again I was surprised. Along with many other stars in the movie, Bennett’s Valentine’s Day seems to turn out pretty horribly after Clarkson breaks off the engagement.
This was a shocking turn for a movie I expected have a cute but disgustingly unsurprising happy ending with a nice wedding. Instead, most of the characters had bad holidays. But at the end despite all the dysfunction the message emerged: In life, certain situations may not meet one’s expectations, but it’s their perspective on the situation that determines their happiness.
Both movies showed me something different than I expected and I liked it. At times some of the situations were easy to predict. However the messages were all valid and each different. I suppose that cliché phrase “don’t judge a book by its cover,” is true.
