Review of The Night Before (2015) by Ydnar4 — 20 Nov 2015

The Night Before was one of the films I was the most excited about for late in 2015. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen reunite with Jonathan Levine, the director of 50/50 which was an excellent film. Levitt stars in the second of three films to be released this year as he has been working hard and expanding his acting range with dramatic performances in The Walk and Snowden later this year.

The writing for The Night Before was better than I thought it would be and there is some emotional parts in the movie and you never really feel like this movie solely exists to make you laugh. You can connect with the three friends in Rogen, Levitt and Mackie all of which have their own struggles in life that they have to deal with throughout the night. There is also a character Mr. Green, played by Michael Shannon, that has some significance that you would never notice at the start of the film, but his role in the film becomes more and more noticeable as the film goes on and in the end you get a very interesting reveal.

The thing that brought The Night Before down a little was the humour. There were several scenes in the film that were really, really funny but it was not consistently funny like Neighbours was last year. I’m sure that there will be people that will find this movie to be one of the funniest this year but to me some of the humour just didn’t catch. There are some cool cameos to watch for that are pretty funny though and that makes the film even more enjoyable.

All together I enjoyed the Night Before and although it may not be considered a “classic” holiday comedy I can see myself watching this one over again at Christmas time in the future.