Review of The Night Before (2015) by Matt C — 21 Nov 2015

After a round of mediocre trailers that gave off the impression that this was a drop-off from This Is the End and even The Interview, I'm happy to report that The Night Before is actually a good movie.

How good? Solid. Not quite great, but still definitely enough to warrant a viewing. Audience members know (or at least should know) what they're getting into when they go to see a Seth Rogen comedy, and it doesn't stray to far from his brand of humor.

Some of the jokes are milked and its third act drags a bit, but The Night Before still has a strong amount of genuine laughs with fun cameos and gleeful ridiculousness. Starting off on a decent-at-best start that seems to feel like this is going to be a modified, Americanized ripoff of The World's End (complete with a very similarly named drug dealer), the movie quickly finds its footing mainly thanks to the charisma of its lead actors.

Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt continue their chemistry showcased in 50/50, and Anthony Mackie finally finds a chance to be front-and-center given how much of a supporting player he's been in the past.

22 Jump Street scene-stealer Jillian Bell is also great as Rogen's pregnant wife, and Lizzy Caplan in inherently likable as Gordon-Levitt's love interest. The movie pays homage and parodies Christmas stories such as It's a Wonderful Life and Home Alone, references which work very well when they aren't referenced through dialogue such as the latter.

The sheer absurdity provides a ton of giggles and even a few guffaws, and it's nice to see a raunchy comedy that isn't weighed down by its attempts at emotions. This is the type of writing and tone that a lot of Adam Sandler movies try to achieve where in between the getting high and bad karaoke, characters realize that they actually care about each other.

It's cute without resorting to clawing sentimentality--thank God. What prevents The Night Before from being a great movie is mostly its unevenness and sense of repetition after a while. Yes, the jokes do work very well, but since this isn't the deepest kind of movie, its humor does become stretched at times.

There's one character that Anthony Mackie's character runs across that is kind of useless and the schtick of Rogen constantly tripping out never really dies down or ups the ante. His character ends up being more of just a bumbling guy on a cocktail of psychedelics, and it gets old halfway through.

The last twenty minutes or so also feel a bit too long, and the film is only 101 minutes. I don't know if I'd see The Night Before again, but it surely has enough positives to make one viewing enjoyable.

The jokes that work at first sometimes feel like they needed to be reigned in, and there are one or two moments where the movie feels like its attempts at comedy are too excessive. But still, I laughed a good amount and enjoyed myself while in the theater.

It could have been better, but it's still fun. 7.9/10, solid, one thumb up, above average, etc.