New Year’s Eve prep should be as simple as keeping good company and having enough champagne and food to carry you through the night, but bringing the wrong person or thing could turn the night into one you’d rather forget. Take a cue from these movies and you should be home free as you make your way into 2014.

By Perri Nemiroff

Of course you hope that every night out will be the night of your life and there are good reasons to want to remember it, but when that night involves an excessive amount of illegal activity, booze and destruction like in Project X, you’re better off holding onto your memories rather than hard evidence.

Ever get soap in your mouth? It’s not fun. As charming as it is that Seth and Evan would risk a beating from Mark in order to impress Jules and Becca, beer mixed with laundry detergent still clinging to the sides of that bottle just won’t taste good. If you’re pulling a Superbad this New Year’s Eve, you’re better off splurging on some backup Goldslick vodkas.

As tempting as that party with that guy/girl might be, if you’re committed to babysitting on New Year’s Eve, suck it up and stick with the gig. Even if Noah’s plan in The Sitter had worked out, how much fun did he think he could have with Marisa with three kids around? Plus, if you refer to yourself as a “sit on the couch, eat a burrito, do whatever I say or I'll kill you type of babysitter,” you probably shouldn’t be watching the kiddos anyway.

It’s totally understandable that four college girls would want to go on spring break, but when they’re willing to rob a restaurant to do it, something is seriously wrong and probably going to get worse. If you’d rather avoid getting arrested, shot, and stuck admiring Alien’s colorful shorts collection, don’t party with people like the girls from Spring Breakers.

Didn’t you learn anything from Return of the Jedi? No good comes from Ewoks playing bongos and dancing. That grand finale left quite the stain on the original Star Wars trilogy and if a teddy bear dance party can have that effect on an iconic film franchise, imagine the heat you’d take for blasting “Yub Nub” and turning a New Year’s party into a fuzzy hug fest.

Unless your New Year’s Eve party is strictly a family affair, leave mom at home. And if your hosting your holiday festivities at your mother’s house, take the opportunity to be her little angle and thank her for letting you and your friends trash her home by sending her on a weekend getaway, or even just a late night out. No one wants their own mother turning into Stifler’s Mom 2.0.

Parties are places for nice dresses, not nice prized possessions. You know what happens when you bring a yearbook to a raging high school party? Not only does no one have the patience to sign it, but it’s going to get dunked in the pool. If you’d rather shield your memories from champagne dribbles and hors d'oeuvre stains, keep the physical item at home and show off the good old days using your handy, compact and somewhat spill-proof iPhone instead.

Unless you want to broadcast the fact that your New Year’s Eve is a total bust like Miranda in Sex and the City, nix the Chinese takeout. New Year’s Eve is for communal finger foods and popping the bubbly, not chicken, broccoli and rice bathed in brown sauce that’ll put you in a food coma before the ball drops.

When someone describes a joint as consisting of “a bit of this, a bit of that,” there’s probably some questionable components to the concoction. It’s too bad Aaron didn’t consider that before giving Aldous’ Jeffrey a go, otherwise he might have known that it consists of weed, opium, heroine, crunched up E’s, Clorox, methadone, subutex, morphine, peyote and some other unidentifiable ingredients and not spent his night petting a furry wall.

If you’ve got a friend who thinks there’s nothing wrong with secretly drugging his buddies to ensure the group has a good time, you probably shouldn’t party with the guy. First it was roofies, then drug-infused marshmallows; Phil and Stu had that life-threatening incident with Marshall and Chow coming. If you’d rather not spend your party time hunting down $42 million in gold in order to save a friend, keep the Alan in your life off the guest list.

New Year’s Eve parties are for having fun and going big before rolling into the New Year, not for petty fights and drama. This is the one time when forgetting the past in order to kick off the year with a clean slate is a totally viable excuse, so tuck away the Kaltine Bars, lift the hoop earring ban, and keep your inner Plastic on lockdown so you can start 2014 with happiness, hope and maybe a well-earned hangover.