Review of A Night at the Roxbury (1998) by David A — 09 May 2010

(from The Watermark, 10/01/98).

Well, it certainly isn't the worst of the Saturday Night Live movies, but it's not the best either. (Then again, could any of them be classified as good?) SNL has been plagued for the past ten years with some of the worst writing on TV. The main problem is they do too many one-joke sketches that last too long to be funny. The "Club Guys" routine is one of the most predictable and one-note bits ever done on the show; how could they even think about attempting a feature length version? Well, I'll be darned if they don't do a halfway decent job. The two socially inept buffoons (Ferrell and Kattan) are actually brothers, whose only happiness in their dead-end lives is their dream of someday owning their own dance club. A rich club owner gives them a break, and their brotherly bond is suddenly put to the test. It's Wayne's World meets Dumb and Dumber. It's silly and stupid, but their physical comedy is excellent and they somehow manage to give the film some degree of charm absent from the TV skits. At the very least, the plot makes sense and the script allows most of the humor to emerge from the characters and their situations as opposed to forcing it upon us. It's not for the Merchant-Ivory crowd, but it's kinda fun.