Director: Lucia Aniello Lead
cast: Scarlett Johansson, Jillian Bell, Zoe Kravatz, Ilana Glazer, Kate
McKinnon, Paul W. Downs, Demi Moore, Ty Burrell
Screenplay: Lucia Aniello, Paul
W. Downs Cinematography: Sean Porter Music Dominic Lewis Distributor: Columbia Pictures Genre:
Comedy Country: USA Language: English
Run time: 1:41
Technical
assessment: 3
Moral
assessment: 2
CINEMA
rating: V18
MTRCB rating: R16
Bride-to-be and senatorial candidate Jess (Scarlett
Johansson) and four of her friends—Alice (Jillian Bell), Blair (Zoe Kravitz),
Frankie (Ilana Glazer) who are college mates from George Washington U, and Pippa
(Kate McKinnon) whom she met while living in Australia)—are off to Miami for a
bachelorette weekend that promises fun in the sun, coke snorts and alcohol
overflowing. Plus a male stripper they
invite to the posh house they’ve borrowed from Jess’ friend. The unexpected happens: one of them gets
overexcited and accidentally kills the stripper. Now they must get rid of the body while
evading the attention of their sex-obsessed neighbors, swinging couple (Demi
Moore and Ty Burrell) who want a ménage a trois with Blair. Blair consents, to distract the couple while
the rest of the gang hide the evidence.
Compared to other movies of its genre, like Hangover and Bridesmaids, Rough Night simply wants to be a comedy, to make
people laugh, and it does this by living up to its title—dishing out rough talk,
boisterous behaviour, self-destructive celebrations, friends bonding and
bickering, uneven comedy, pervy pleasure, handling a corpse. The movie is fast-paced and well-shot, and
the synergy among the actors supports their good comedic timing. Each of the characters gets gets his/her own
fair share of the spotlight, too. Except
for a few jabs aimed at local Florida laws (which apparently go over the heads
of the average viewer), Rough Night
scores a pretty high laugh-per-minute rating.
The problem with comedies is, at times they trivialize
serious stuff, becoming offensive to some.
CINEMA therefore cautions against
the viewer’s getting carried away by the laughter and becoming numb to the
darker side of the story. Rough Night’s core plot involves manslaughter,
no less; the killing here may have been unintentional, but the hiding of the crime
is deliberate and milked for laughs—and that’s totally not funny. The human body,
alive or dead, deserves respect; and while the story shrugs off the issue
through deus ex machina, exonerating
the culprits, such a coincidence rarely happens in real life. Also, subplots showing a sex-crazed couple in
a threesome and another couple engaged (off camera) in same-sex fornication
could encourage imitative behavior among the young.
