You’ve got to hand it to Kate McKinnon. The Saturday Night Live cast member is determined to take back the inflection, turning the tables on legions of Aussie actors who regularly pretend to be American in movies. The fact that her own Australian dialect ranges from Perth to Canberra and occasionally into New York is just part of the fun.
But that kind of doing-it-badly-for-laughs can only take you so far. Rough Night, the feature writing/directing debut of Lucia Aniello (TV’s Broad City), tries to be a little Bridesmaids, a little Weekend at Bernie’s, and comes off as a collection of hits and misses. There are laughs, but I would hesitate to add the adjective “aplenty.”
As an example of a miss, take the scene in which the bachelorette party, headed up by Senatorial hopeful and bride-to-be Jess (Scarlett Johansson), tries to smuggle a dead stripper out of the house they’ve borrowed for their wild weekend. Of course, the only vehicle they can access is a tiny Smart car. But there’s no explanation as to why all five women feel the need to pile in together, thus requiring Mr. Dead Guy to poke out of the sunroof. I like an overstuffed-vehicle gag as much as the next critic, but give me a reason to buy in.
Much funnier is the scene where we first see what Jess’s fiancé (Paul W. Downs, the film’s co-writer and one of the many Broad City alumni in the cast) is up to at his stag night. Let’s just say there will not be a Hangover-style sequel to Rough Night. And there’s a throwaway Rob Lowe joke that might be the funniest thing I’ve heard in a movie this year.
Much funnier is the scene where we first see what Jess’s fiancé (Paul W. Downs, the film’s co-writer and one of the many Broad City alumni in the cast) is up to at his stag night. Let’s just say there will not be a Hangover-style sequel to Rough Night. And there’s a throwaway Rob Lowe joke that might be the funniest thing I’ve heard in a movie this year.
But all too often the screenplay grabs for the lowest common cliché. Jess and her posse – they include Jillian Bell, Zoë Kravitz and Ilana Glazer – arrive in Miami? Cue Gloria Estefan’s Conga song from 1985, laid over a montage seemingly borrowed from the local tourism board. They’re walking down the sidewalk? Let’s put them five abreast and in slow motion!
Or how about the ol’ “I am not doing that!” line, followed by a cut to the speaker doing that.
The movie also spends scant time on the emotional lives of its characters. We first meet them tearing up a college campus in 2006, before moving to the present day to find they’ve drifted professionally while remaining in touch. Bell’s character is clingy, Glazer’s anti-establishment, Kravitz’s all-too-establishment. And Johansson’s fledging politician is worried about what a night of drugs and strippers will do to her campaign chances – though not worried enough to put a stop to it.
The movie also spends scant time on the emotional lives of its characters. We first meet them tearing up a college campus in 2006, before moving to the present day to find they’ve drifted professionally while remaining in touch. Bell’s character is clingy, Glazer’s anti-establishment, Kravitz’s all-too-establishment. And Johansson’s fledging politician is worried about what a night of drugs and strippers will do to her campaign chances – though not worried enough to put a stop to it.
It’s all kept pretty light, which is quite a feat when the death-of-a-male-stripper is the central plot point. But it needs a little more for its cast to do.
Ty Burrell and Demi Moore pop up as horny neighbours who horn in at several inconvenient moments, but conveniently disappear the rest of the time. Rough Night feels like a rough draft, one that could have used at least one more pass by its writers before committing it to the screen.
My opinion: I'm probably not going to watch this movie because I don't like comedy.
"Oh Henry, you could have been so much better": Today I found this article by Tina Hassannia in the Edmonton Journal:
The Book of Henry is about a boy, his mom, his little brother and the girl next door. That’s what Henry (Jaeden Lieberher) says through voice-over narration, but only at the end of the film.
There’s no purpose to such a contrived line other than screenwriter Gregg Hurwitz (a comic book and crime-novel writer) and director Colin Trevorrow (director of the upcoming Star Wars: Episode IX) believing that their audience is stupid.
The film’s premise is even dumber: Henry’s mother Susan (Naomi Watts) plans to kill child-abusing neighbour Glenn (Dean Norris) through a methodically planned sniper mission that her 11-year old genius son laid out through comprehensive notes and voice memos.
But wait, isn’t this supposed to be a feel-good family drama? The look and feel sure spell it out: Henry’s tree house looks like something out a Roald Dahl novel, chock full of Rube Goldberg contraptions, intended to endear us to the world-weary 11-yearold; the younger, bespectacled adorable brother Peter (Jacob Tremblay) needs Henry’s help from school bullies; their mom’s corny bedtime routine features a lullaby and toy ukulele.
But Hurwitz and Trevorrow don’t have the patience for a single genre, so they mash up a variety that include traumatic medical drama and a taking-justice-into-your-own-hands thriller. Such Frankenstein movie magic leads to a tone-deaf, ghoulish, campy and overwrought film.
The film makes no sense. Henry is the adult of the house, managing the finances, while Susan blows off steam from her waitressing job through video games and carousing with her floozie co-worker (Sarah Silverman, working far below what she deserves, but then again, the same goes for everyone cast in this movie).
If that’s slightly believable, Henry’s stock trading acumen that has resulted in $700,000 in a bank account, is not. Susan shrugs off Henry’s practical suggestions to quit or buy a new car for no reason, making her sound silly, yet we somehow are to believe she can carry out murder.
Would it kill the screenwriter to maybe flesh out a character past the nanosecond devoted to each story element?
Hurwitz and Trevorrow don’t have such patience, though, they’ve already fast-forwarded to the traumatizing medical issue that lands a huge bomb in the middle of the movie, tonally shifting it with the abruptness of an earthquake.
Without spoiling anything, let’s just say it accomplishes little more than giving Susan a reason to start “adulting” again and gives Lee Pace a useless role as a handsome doctor to suggest what this movie might have been if Hurwitz and Trevorrow liked rom-coms.
About Henry’s murder plan, by the way: His titular book, which plots out every conceivable detail, also includes rationales on why killing Glenn, a well respected community man, is the only way to save his victim.
Yet Henry’s efforts to expose the abuse are half-assed at best. He never once tries asking an adult like Susan to voice the complaint, for example. Getting away with murder, the film suggests, is easier than reporting child abuse.
The film’s convenient ending confirms that The Book of Henry is uninterested in exploring the idea that powerful men can be infallible.
In fact, there are no ideas at all here, just one contrived plot element set up to trigger off another.
Think of The Book of Henry as a broken Rube Goldberg machine — all the cutesy steampunk doodads are for naught without proper planning to make it function.
My opinion: I'm probably not going to watch this movie. I read this review and I saw the trailer and it doesn't look very good.
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