Rough Night
(2017)Scarlett Johansson leads this R-rated bachelorette party comedy as the bride-to-be, reunited with her longtime friends played by Kate McKinnon (Ghostbusters), Jillian Bell (22 Jump Street), Ilana Glazer (Broad City), and Zoë Kravitz (Mad Max: Fury Road).... More
Determined to get their freak on in Miami, the squad spend the night getting loose and slamming drugs. But when a male stripper accidentally dies in their hands, their weekend suddenly goes into panic mode. From the writer-director of Broad City.Hide
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Directed by Lucia Aniello (feature debut)
Starring Scarlett Johansson, Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, Ilana Glazer, Zoë Kravitz, Paul W. Downs, Demi Moore, Ty Burrell, Dean Winters
Written by Paul W. Downs, Lucia Aniello
Flicks Review
BY Liam Maguren Flicks Writer
Hollywood shat out some dull comedies this year with Fist Fight, CHiPS, Snatched and Baywatch. Thank goodness director Lucia Aniello (Broad City) made her feature debut, delivering a solid laugh machine centred on five friends reuniting at a bachelorette party.... More
They haven’t let loose in a decade, but when they do, it results in someone dying. Scarlett Johansson proves a great comedic straight woman as the bride-to-be. The always-funny Jillian Bell (22 Jump Street, The Night Before) gets the co-lead role she deserves as the self-anointed BFF. Kate McKinnon does her usual mix of quick quips and funny faces at half the speed of SNL. (She also sports a good Ozzie accent 90% of the time, though goofs on the other 10%.) With all that Broad City experience, Aniello knows exactly when to snap Ilana Glazer out and pull her back in like a comically sharpened Swiss Army Knife. Zoë Kravitz feels watered down in comparison, but her character’s shamelessly high maintenance ways still earn some chuckles.
It’s a shame the actual storytelling couldn’t have been better. The film spends a lot of time pulling the ‘How are they going to get out of this?’ card only to tear it up when the script throws out a number of convenient coincidences to solve their problems. At a certain point, the film stops pushing the plot forward and instead repeatedly throws it like a boomerang. At that stage, nothing really progresses and there aren’t enough jokes to pick up the slack. If you feel the film dragging in the mid-section, this is why.
But this only holds a good comedy back from being a great one. With lines that don’t feel like half-assed improv and R-rated humour that isn’t just crass for crassness's sake, Rough Night is the tequila shot you won’t painfully regret in the morning.Hide
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Rough Night
BY Alissa-Warren superstar
It was amusing, Scarlett has great comic timing and the female cast that surrounded her are priceless. The script was not surprisingly predictable but the characters are likable even if the story is silly and runs out of puff fairly quickly. Nice little cameos by Demi Moore and that guy from "Modern Family" as an oversexed couple and Colton Haynes as a stripper.
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The Press Reviews
Certainly in the upper echelons of the "Girls Can Be Funny Too Without Having To Act Like Men" genre. Full Review
A fun night will be had, but you'll have trouble remembering it in the morning. Full Review
The set pieces feel increasingly obligatory, tenuously stitched into the larger plot with thinner and thinner thread. Full Review
Mostly, it's a flavourless stew of elements from other, not necessarily better, movies that starts dying around the same time as the unintended victim of the girls gone wild. Full Review
The best thing about "Rough Night" is the feisty, claws-out spontaneity of its competitive banter between "sisters" who love and hate each other. Full Review
Rough Night didn't rewrite the book and it's often thoroughly silly. But it's also - like hen's nights are supposed to be but never are - a lot of fun. Full Review
That women can be as deadly or immoral as men isn't new or interesting, and here it also isn't all that entertaining. Full Review
A couple of all too short and sweet laugh-out-loud moments early on soon gives way to silly, screeching, dullsville - and a damn shame too. Full Review
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