The Night Before Movie Download

8 / 10

not the best of the Rogen/Goldberg productions, but has a lot of solid laughs and genuine surprises
To say everything that makes The Night Before work so well, certainly if you haven’t seen the movie yet, would spoil the fun. The basic gist of this is to give Seth Rogen and company a chance to tackle the Holiday Movie (in caps), and they pull it off, for the most part. And there is some genuine pathos to be had, certainly from the set-up which isn’t very jokey: Ethan lost his parents when he was a teenager, and his friends Chris and Isaac came in and helped him not be all alone, at the least during the holidays, and spent every Christmas for years playing Goldeneye on N64, doing karaoke at the only place doing it on Christmas Eve, and getting f***ed up whenever possible. Now though, in present day, the three of them (Levitt, Mackie and Rogen respectively) have all moved on – except, possibly, for Ethan, who works at a department store and can’t seem to get the courage to commit in a relationship with Diana (Lizzy Caplan). But there may be one last Christmas Eve to have – Chris is now a major athlete, Isaac about to have his first child – and for wackiness to ensue as they say. Or crazy holy s*** did that just happen-ness too.

If you’ve seen and enjoyed This is the End or Pineapple Express or The Interview or any of the movies Rogen and Goldberg have put together, this is not too much different, except that it’s fully steeped in being a holiday movie as much as Pineapple was an action flick: it takes the tropes, twists them around with a full sense of outrageous comedy and (often) wonderful satire, and you either ride with it or not. For some reason, in a way, the sophomoric sensibility shouldn’t be that far removed from Adam Sandler movies, but I just find Rogen and company – here from director Jonathan Levine (from the groups relatively more serious 50/50, also with Levitt, and The Wackness) – have a better sensibility, and a firmer grasp on what is actually FUNNY, and can be called back as funny.

There’s one actor used so especially well here it seems like a sacrilege to even say who this actor is (if you look him he’s the guy who portrays Mr. Green), and it brings a full sense of eccentricity into a movie that needs it – or at least isn’t unwelcome to it. It’s actually a running thread that goes on to even satirize The Great Gatsby of all things (not the 3D movie so much, ho-ho), and brings in a celebrity guest like Miley Cyrus. This latter part is good though not totally fresh in a way, since the team did this in This is the End with the Backstreet Boys, but it’s fine. Not every single story thread in the film works; Anthony Mackie’s subplot involves a ‘Hipster Grinch’ he hooks up with over the course of the night who steals his weed, and uh… OK.

It’s actually Rogen for me who sort of steals the show from everyone else, as he goes through his night with a little kit of drugs (given to him as a gift by his wife, of all people, which comes back around in a wickedly funny scene set in church). Rogen fully commits to it to the point that he goes far beyond anything else he’s done as far as this kind of wildly comic performance; even hints of Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas come in to how tripped out he becomes, and there’s just a non-stop barrage of jokes. Just when I thought I’d get tired of what his character would do, Rogen would simply make it funny by how he delivered a line or gave a look, or how manic and surreal the visions get. By the time he’s talking to the characters in the Nativity scene with them as, uh, not those characters, it’s hit a height that is hard to top.

Levitt provides the sort of ‘heart’ of the film – he even gets into it with two Santa Claus men at one point – and has the sort of ‘straight-man’ role of the bunch. He plays it well, and yet he can be funny too – it could almost be a 3 Stooges deal, but not quite really, it’s too hip and smart and clever for that, though there IS slapstick, and even Home Alone homages – but it is what it is. All three guys make up a really terrific group, and I hope to see Mackie more in these movies. There’s some real debauchery and off-color humor (more than few awesome Jewish jokes, all at Rogen’s expense and, yes, some of it set in Church so that helps to up the amazement), and yet the filmmakers do something tricky and pull it off: it’s making fun of holiday movie tropes while being one deep down. Not every joke or line is a knock-out-the-park laugh-fest here, and there may be one or two story points that don’t get paid off perhaps (including what really sets off a major part of this story in the first place), but there’s so much that does work that it’s hard to pass up.Read More