Review: The Night Before

Three 30ish buddies (Seth Rogen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Anthony Mackie) go in search of a supposedly awesome party on Christmas Eve. Hijinks ensue. Well, actually tedium and drug/sex jokes ensue. As in, Rogen spends part of the film high on drugs and being sent dick pics by a guy named James. Lizzy Caplan plays Gordon-Levitt’s ‘one that got away’, Mindy Kaling plays her friend, Ilana Glazer plays their other friend, and Jillian Bell is Rogen’s pregnant wife. In smaller roles, Michael Shannon turns up as a drug dealer, Lorraine Toussaint is Mackie’s mother, Miley Cyrus plays herself, and Tracy Morgan narrates the film.

 

The wheels had started to fall off the “Harold and Kumar” franchise once “A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas” came along, but there’s nothing in this 2015 Seth Rogen variant on similar themes that the aforementioned Yuletide stoner comedy didn’t do better. A lot better. Director Jonathan Levine (the dull “All the Boys Love Mandy Lane”, the not-bad “50/50” and the rather good “Warm Bodies”) might be at the helm, but his co-writers Kyle Hunter (producer of “50/50” and the awful “This is the End”), Ariel Shaffir (“This is the End” and “The Interview”), and Evan Goldberg (Rogen’s “Superbad” alum) are mostly to blame for this boring, unfunny film full of overrated comedic talent (Rogen, the spectacularly unfunny Mindy Kaling, Ilana Glazer, Randall Park, Jillian Bell etc.) and genuinely talented people who need to learn to be more choosy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Anthony Mackie, Lizzy Caplan, Michael Shannon, Lorraine Toussaint, Tracy Morgan, and one uncredited name who won’t be mentioned by me). It’s sort of an amusing idea to have a Christmas film narrated by the amusingly dumb Tracy Morgan, unfortunately he’s not given anything funny to say. This in a film highlighted by Seth Rogen’s character sporting an appropriately Jewish bent on an ugly Christmas jumper. Yep, that’s the comedic highlight of the film for me, even though ugly Christmas jumpers seem more like real-life than an actual joke. Other than that, there’s the cute nightmare where Rogen dreams that he’s at a strip club and his now grown daughter is the stripper. That’s more cute than funny, though.

For the most part it’s desperate and dull. I mean, 10 minutes in and Rogen’s wife (played by the aggressively unfunny Jillian Bell) has decided to thank Rogen for supporting her during her pregnancy by giving him a sample bag full of assorted drugs for him to go and binge on. If that sounds like the height of hilarity to you, then this movie is your equivalent of what “The Blues Brothers” and “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” is for me. Here I was left wondering why drugs and drug users are meant to be inherently funny, and why they’re doing a parody of the piano scene in “Big” with some hippity hop song I’ve never heard of. Yeah, this one’s not for me, I just can’t relate to people who need to have a chemically altered state of mind. It’s astoundingly dull, though Lizzy Caplan’s pretty terrific and has obvious charisma, and Anthony Mackie is at least halfway likeable. Joseph Gordon-Levitt looks to be in a bad mood and Seth Rogen being muted (except for one seriously annoying cocaine-related freak out) is as palatable as it is uninteresting. Former “Orange is the New Black” scene-stealer Lorraine Toussaint proves in short order to be way too talented for this shit, playing Mackie’s wonderful mother. That’s the movie I want to see, Mackie and his mother. And give Lizzie Caplan something to do, too. Remove the rest. Meanwhile, it’s obvious from the moment you hear the name James, who the person sending Rogen dick pics is, and that person needs to grow the fuck up and stick to dramas, which he excels at. Likewise, Michael Shannon should be way above playing a drug dealer in a stoner comedy, but at least in his case he gets one speech at the end that he delivers quite well for the not very much that it’s worth. TV comediennes Mindy Kaling and Ilana Glazer continue to be their own biggest fans. The idea of someone deliberately acting like a Christmas Grinch is clever, but as played by Glazer it’s not funny. That sums up a lot about the film, actually: Could be theoretically funny in parts, but isn’t funny at all. And then Miley Cyrus turns up to sing a duet with Joseph Gordon-Levitt of one of her songs from several years ago (And she still sings like she’s got a severe nasal blockage). Don’t give these people credit in thinking that these 30 somethings liking Miley Cyrus is meant to be funny. It’s not. They just thought it’d be cool to have Miley in their film. That’s seriously lame. Miley Cyrus is ridiculously lame. She says fuck and pussy in the film, ‘coz she’s like a totally for real grown up and all now. Speaking of music, the film ends with a Run DMC song that pretty much serves the same purpose that ‘Goodnight, Sweetheart’ did for “Three Men in a Baby” except Run DMC suck and “Three Men and a Baby” was a genuinely likeable, amusing little film.

 

I hated this, in case you can’t already tell. Taste is subjective, so you may love this Yuletide-set stoner comedy. I think it’s one of the worst films of 2015, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.

 

Rating: D