Here's a very important tip for any budding filmmakers out there who just so happen to be reading this: if you're going to be "re-imagining" material that has already been made... don't make it worse. Look at The Hangover. It took nearly the same exact plot of Dude, Where's My Car, removed all the terrible alien subplots, found actual funny actors not named Ashton Kutcher, and made a superior film (sequels notwithstanding). Now, you probably don't know this... and definitely don't remember this... but back in 1998 an extremely dark comedy called Very Bad Things came out. The movie centered around a bachelor party in Las Vegas. The guys all pitch in and get a stripper/hooker. In the midst of their drunken and drug-fueled debauchery, the stripper is accidentally killed. Instead of doing the right thing and calling the cops... the guys reluctantly decide to bury the body out in the desert. From there the guys (who include Jon Favreau, Daniel Stern, Christian Slater and Jeremy Piven) all try to live with the guilt of what they did and wind up injuring and murdering themselves or others in the process leading to one of the MOST fucked up (and equally hilarious) endings to a film in movie history. If you haven't seen this movie, I highly recommend it because it is damn-near perfect and egregiously underrated. Rough Night... is not.
I really wanted to like Rough Night. I really did. I was excited at the idea that a female-driven Hangover-style comedy from the writers of Broad City were doing a remake of a darkly hilarious and macabre film that has been undervalued since its release. Hell yes. The roles have been reversed and the stage is set for these ladies to outdo the source material upon which it is based. Unfortunately, Rough Night misses nearly every single opportunity presented to them at every stage in the film. Let's start with our characters: We have an opening scene set ten years in the past with four of our five leads at a college party. We get almost nothing of the friendship dynamic from this scene other than the fact that they're friends. This would've been a perfect time to set, well, anything up for later... and, you know, start us off with even a little hint of comedy. But even my girlfriend, after the first five minutes of the movie, whispered in my ear, "this isn't very funny so far." I'm a little less quick to judgement... but her instincts would not fail her for the rest of the film.
Flash-forward ten years to present day. We've got Jess (Scarlett Johansson), the bride-to-be who is now running from some sort of political office. She's a workaholic and hasn't made any time for her friends as of late and continuously puts work over her fiance. Then there's Alice (Jillian Bell), a neurotic school teacher who is very protective of Jess and hangs on her every word. There's Blair (Zoe Kravitz) an uptight rich chick going through a divorce and ex-college-lover of Frankie (Ilana Glazer), an almost caricature of a feminist activist. Finally, there's Pippa (Kate McKinnon), the old Australian roommate of Jess. Together this quintet go to Miami for a bachelorette party, wind up doing an obscene amount of cocaine and drinking just as much in alcohol, hire a stripper, and... wouldn't you know it... accidentally kill him. However, this is where Rough Night differs from Very Bad Things. The guilt that piles up inside of each of the men in VBT leads them to turn on one another in violent and uncomfortable ways. The girls in Rough Night have a moment or two of guilt and freaking out over a dead body, but the rest of it is them kind of goofily trying to dispose of said corpse. Instead of going all out, balls to the wall, crazy with this kind of hilariously morbid situation... they go more Weekend At Bernie's with it... and it's kinda stupid.
Because we only have surface-level relationships within the group, there's no real common conflict or emotion derived from these characters and the situation they find themselves in. Sure, there's some banter and arguing (or debating), and moments of it can illicit a chuckle here and there, but you're just kind of sitting there waiting for something, anything, funny to happen. I think there are three main reasons why Rough Night fails as a film in my mind. First, because of the source material. Very Bad Things held nothing back... NOTHING. In fact, it almost goes too far over the line that you probably have to be a special kind of sick person to get any sort of enjoyment out of a film like that being played for a dark comedy (I am definitely one of these people). But Rough Night doesn't. Aside from some jokes about body functions/appendages... there's nothing really over the top about Rough Night. The violence ends with the dead stripper and the rest of it is played out like slapstick gags. For instance, Pippa drives the body out to the ocean on a jet ski, then races it back to the beach... hits the sand... is ejected from the jet ski and lands on her neck. She stands up revealing she's fine while everyone else questions why she isn't dead. That's the level of "pushing it over the line" we get from this film.
The second reason the film fails is that it's helmed by Lucia Aniello, a regular writer/director/producer of Broad City. That show is very funny funny and unbelievably smart in its comedy and social commentary. The level of sharp comedy and intelligence that I expect from Broad City, I was expecting here, and in fact, got nearly the opposite. These are lazy gags that could've been spruced up and improved upon with just another rewrite or two. It's even more especially disappointing because we are given a cast of very funny women. Which leads me to my third and final point of why the movie failed... is all of the missed opportunities for comedy. There is hardly a joke or a visual gag that lands. Our audience was unusually quiet for a comedy film with a cast as funny as Rough Night's is. ScarJo isn't given much to do in the comedy department. Jillian Bell, for a good portion of the first half of the film is trying to do the jokes for everyone. Ilana Glazer has some funny moments, but her character is more of a parody of a feminist activist than a real-life one. She has absolutely zero chemistry with Zoe Kravitz who is supposed to be her equal and opposite reaction. Then, there's the entire sub-plot of Jess's boyfriend (also Broad City alum Paul W. Downs) freaking out about the girl's party, he pulls a "Sad Astronaut" (like the chick who drove across country in adult diapers to catch her man cheating) to catch up with the girls and find out what exactly they're doing. It's obviously supposed to be played for ridiculous laughs, but it comes off as just awkward, uncomfortable, and trying much too hard.
There are several cameos in the film, too, that are severely underused and wasted. Jess's boyfriend Peter has his bachelor party the same night as her party, but (and this is kinda funny), they're doing it classy-- wine tasting-- and acting like complete bores as the girls go out and rage. Among the friends at the bachelor party are Bo Burnam and Eric Andre... both comics with a unique and strange style of comedy that could've added anything more to the script... except they have to play it overtly straight-laced, which lacks any sort of unique comedic presence from either of them. Then there's the next door neighbors of where the girls are partying... Ty Burrell and Demi Moore are the sexed-up swingers trying to entice the girls to bring their party next door and swing. This sounds like it's ripe for any number of hilarious or uncomfortable moments, but the only thing uncomfortable about it is how unfunny all of it really is. The only comedic legs this movie has to stand on are that of Kate McKinnon, who I'm convinced is quite possibly the funniest female in Hollywood right now. Even given a garbage script and an uneven film, she can make nearly everything that comes out of her mouth funny. Her eyes get bigger laughs than anything Zoe Kravitz does throughout the entire movie. McKinnon, and to some extent Jillian Bell, is the shining comedic light in an otherwise dimly lit "comedy" that just doesn't really know what kind of comedy it even wants to be.
The fact that this movie isn't good just sucks. With gender inequality running just as rampant as ever in Hollywood and the first female-led superhero movie hitting record box office numbers, this should've been a second win for women. These movies are never greenlit by Hollywood. They support frat pack films significantly more than female-driven comedies and this should've been a win. However, with the release in the middle of summer... reviews mixed... and word of mouth that's inevitably going to be spread... it's going to disappear pretty quickly. It's unfortunate, but hopefully it does well enough that someone else, who has the ability to write something a bit more cohesive and a lot more funny can take the female-driven comedy reigns and give us more movies like this... only, you know... funny.
D+
No comments:
Post a Comment