Movie Review: 'The Night Before'
By Bill Wine
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Twas five weeks before Christmas and the night before The Night Before, and moviegoers seeking a squeaky-clean Christmas flick would have to look elsewhere.
That's because The Night Before is an R-rated Yuletide comedy with drugs and booze standing in for warmth and cheer.
Viewers seeking a disciplined, well-made holiday attraction will be similarly disappointed.
The Night Before is about three lifelong buddies who are now grownups.
Sort of.
They've spent every Christmas Eve since childhood – that's 14 straight for anyone counting -- expanding the definition of "holiday spirit" by being much more naughty than nice.
But now they're about to enter lives with adult responsibilities, as husbands and dads and breadwinners.
So they figure they've got one more Christmas Eve in them that they can devote to memorable debauched revelry.
Which is why they are seeking to find the Christmas party to end all Christmas parties and why they think they may have found it in the Nutcracker Ball.
Seth Rogen (one of the film's producers), Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Anthony Mackie are Isaac, Ethan, and Chris, respectively.
And Michael Shannon plays Mr. Green, their – well, let's just call him their drug dealer and leave it at that.
Director Jonathan Levine (Warm Bodies, The Wackness), who worked with Rogen and Gordon-Levitt on 2011's unique comedy-drama, the far superior 50/50, co-wrote the Night Before screenplay along with Kyle Hunter, Ariel Shaffir, and Evan Goldberg.
Their script notwithstanding, the film is so loose, so arbitrary, and so repetitious, with the focal characters so sketchily drawn, we get the feeling that the players are making it up as they go along. Ideas for bits that might have struck the writers and/or players as amusing at rehearsals fall flat in ways that absolutely scream for retakes and cuts.
What few laughs there are come mostly from Rogen's zonked-out-of-his-mind riff, which stands apart from the skimpy narrative and reeks of creative desperation.
There are a few mild satirical swipes – nothing to write home about -- that appear to be trying to give Bad Santa a run for its nose-thumbing money.
But there is also a half-hearted dash of forced sentiment, perhaps to justify The Night Before's existence as a holiday-season attraction that's not exactly aimed at the family audience, the usual target for Christmas-celebrating films.
So we'll imbibe 1-1/2 stars out of 4 for a sloppy and self-indulgent holiday celebration. The Night Before feels a lot like the morning after.