Rough Night

Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

Sep 18, 2017 Web Exclusive By Stephen Danay

Part of a recent trend of R-rated comedies focused on female friendships, Rough Night is proof that the failings of modern studio comedies cannot be overcome by diversity alone. Directed by Lucia Aniello - best known for writing and directing numerous episodes of Broad City - Rough Night chronicles the misadventures of a bachelorette party after they accidentally kill a male stripper and attempt to cover it up. Conceived as a distaff mash-up of The Hangover and Very Bad Things, the film boasts a talented cast, a scattered sense of humor and more poorly edited improv than you can shake a stick at.

Studio comedies have developed a strict formula over the past decade: high concept narrative hooks populated by comedians with established personalities riffing with each other while cameras are pointed at them. Ground zero for this blueprint was Judd Apatow’s success in the mid-aughts, but ten years later, the formula has grown stale. If these films were guaranteed to succeed based solely on premise and cast alone, then Rough Night would be a slam dunk. National treasure Kate McKinnon is on hand playing…a Kate McKinnon character with an Australian accent. Broad City star Ilana Glazer plays… Ilana from Broad City. Jillian Bell plays the over-sexed, petty best friend character that Jonah Hill would be playing in the male version of this movie. Zoe Kravitz is the mean, rich one who doesn’t seem like she’d hang out with the rest of them. And Scarlett Johansson acts as the anchor, her bride-to-be character clearly modeled after a young Hilary Clinton, a well-meaning do-gooder who can’t loosen up. As the only non-comedian of the group - other than Kravitz, who doesn’t make much of an impression at all - Johansson acquits herself reasonably well, showing a facility for silly faces and reaction shots as befits a straight woman playing off a group of oddballs.

Where she - and the film - start to flail is when they are required to make us believe that these characters are actual people. The fraying relationship between Johansson’s maturing protagonist and Bell’s trapped-in-the-past best friend is especially hard to take seriously thanks to Bell spending most of the movie as a selfish knucklehead. The approach of cutting together the best improvised takes ensures that none of the conversations have a coherent flow and that the characters only develop when the film grinds to a halt and allows the script to reassert itself.

This isn’t to say that there’s no enjoyment to be had in Rough Night. After a lethal first act of setup and obvious exposition, the film begins to lean into the gleeful anarchy of its premise and scores points thanks to the sheer escalation of an already insane situation. McKinnon predictably walks away with the film, serving up some delightfully absurd non sequiturs and committing to a fully physical performance that would have worked just as well if the film were silent. The Blu-ray edition features the typical assortment of gag reels and alternate takes, almost as if to drive home the way in which these films are thrown together.

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