Rough Night

Rough Night

Starring Scarlett Johansson, Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, Ilana Glazer

Directed by Lucia Aniello

The Story:
Ten years after their college days, Jess (Scarlett Johansson) is running for Congress and is marrying her longtime, boring, fiancee; Alice (Jillian Bell) is a teacher who loves reminiscing about the good ole days; Frankie (Ilana Glazer) is an activist who still holds a flame for her ex-girlfriend; Blair (Zoe Kravitz) is the ex-girlfriend who now has a three-year-old son and is in the middle of a divorce.  Alice reunites the girls for Jess's bachelorette party in Miami, along with Jess's Australian friend Pippa (Kate McKinnon).

After a wild night out, the girls decide to hire a stripper, but the man who arrives (Ryan Cooper) is accidentally killed by Alice, and the girls spend a wild night trying to cover up their crime before they face some serious jail time, and all the while old issues bubble to the surface that threatens their years-long friendship.

The Synopsis:
Ever since "Bridesmaids" became a surprise box office (and critical) success back in the summer of 2011, Hollywood has tried desperately to find the next big all-female comedy hit.  The reboot of "Ghostbusters" last year fell flat, and "Pitch Perfect 2" didn't deliver as much as the first.  Director Lucia Aniello (who also wrote the screenplay with her real-life husband, Paul Downs, who plays Jess's fiance in the movie) tried to ignite that all-female fire and produce another surprise hit, hoping to make "Rough Night" the new "Bridesmaids."  Unfortunately, that didn't happen, as the film was a relatively unfunny mess of mixed emotions, forced acting and an insane third act that hearkens back to the cheesy 80s comedies.

So what went wrong?  The cast is as strong as you can get for a comedy: Kate McKinnon is comedic gold, especially with her latest stint as Hillary Clinton on SNL, but here she's just annoying.  She has a very fake Australian accent that grates on your nerves from the first moment you hear it, and it doesn't get any better.  Yet, she does deliver the biggest laughs, mostly due to her physical comedy.  Jillian Bell is trying SO hard to be the next Melissa McCarthy, playing off the overweight best friend figure while just serving as irritating fodder, obviously showing her insecurities throughout by smothering Jess and monopolizing all her time.  Ilana Glazer plays off the "I am woman" theme by protesting everything, not showering, fighting the system, and that's pretty much it.  Zoe Kravitz is the rich girl in the group, with good fashion sense, but that's all we're really given about her backstory.

The biggest fish out of water is Scarlett Johansson, who hasn't appeared in a strictly comedic film since 2007's "The Nanny Diaries" (she's appeared in other comedies since, but here she's lead billing).  We've known her now as one of the best female butt-kickers in cinema, and seeing her trying to be helpless and naive (yet still showcasing some monstrous action moves) is as believable as Bigfoot.  She plays her comedy role as the girl who's seemingly constantly unsure of what's happening, as you see the shock in her eyes pretty much in every scene, or it could be Johansson panicking on the inside knowing she made one of the biggest blunders of her career.

Regardless, the story itself is so contrived you don't know what direction they're going in.  In what's supposed to be a simple "we accidentally killed a male stripper and now have to hide the body" turns into one insane night of stripper cops, easily breakable cars, old people buying throwaway phones, and one insane couple who lives next door (in all honesty, the best parts of the film center around these heavy 60s style swingers, played hilariously by Demi Moore and Ty Burrell).  There were slight moments of funny, but mostly the jokes fell flat and the film tried to go from funny to serious to funny again so many times it makes your head spin.

This is particularly seen in the relationship between the friends, which you need one of those walls with several pictures and tacked-up wire connecting them all to even begin to understand how they're friends in the first place.  Alice is a smothering friend to Jess, Jess is annoyed by that but doesn't say it, Alice hates Pippa because she and Jess are close, it seems like Frankie and Blair don't even like anybody, and Pippa is pretty much oblivious to everything.  This, of course, comes to a head in the denouement, before the third act spirals into utter madness the likes not seen since those 80s throwback comedies that were barely funny then, but are plain stupid now.

The Summary:
While I had high hopes for "Rough Night," I found myself having a ...rough...time trying to even care about this jumbled mess of a "Bridesmaids" wannabe.

The Score: C