ROUGH NIGHT – Review

Zoe Kravitz, Ilana Glazer, Scarlett Johansson, and Jillian Bell star in Lucia Aniello’s bachelorette party comedy ROUGH NIGHT, Photo by Macall Polay. Courtesy of Columbia/Sony Pictures.

Scarlett Johansson leads a cast of raucous women characters in a comedy that does more than just flip the usual bachelor party trope on its head, in ROUGH NIGHT. The result is a refreshing take on buddy comedy that not only turns the tables on gender but completely nails how women really interact with each other, in a fitfully funny comedy.

Besides a strong female lead cast, ROUGH NIGHT is directed by a woman, Lucia Aniello, who also co-wrote the script and is one of the producers. Unlike the typical male-written script, these female characters are spot-on and interact like real women do, even if the situation is over-the-top comedy. While the women characters and how they interact is refreshingly accurate, the humor is sometimes uneven. Still, the film has much to recommend it – including not being another Bridesmaids wanna-bee.

Not surprisingly, the humor is on the raunchy side and leans a bit dark, although it mostly skips the potty humor, a nice change from many recent comedies. The plot follows the general outlines of other bachelor-party-gone-wrong comedies like THE HANGOVER, where one bad decision leads to another, with bits from WEEKEND AT BERNIES and VERY BAD THINGS as well.

Ten years after college, best buds Alice (Jillian Bell), Frankie (Ilana Glazer), and Blair (Zoe Kravitz) reunite with bride-to-be Jess (Scarlett Johansson) for a wild bachelorette weekend in Miami. Alice has it all planned out, and the friends are set up in a beach-side home for the weekend, because just one day won’t be enough – at least for Alice. These four musketeers are joined by the bride’s Aussie pal Pippa (Kate McKinnon, sporting a wavering Australian accent but unerring comic instincts) who met Jess during a college study-abroad term but has never met her other college friends.

Although the women were inseparable pals and all wild partiers during college, each has gone her own way since. A flashback that starts the film shows us the college-aged characters that were, with best friends Jess and Alice teaming up to take on the frat boys at beer pong. Post-college, Jess has transformed into a sincere but awkward would-be politician, nervously shooting a political ad for TV, dressing perfectly, and constantly worrying about her image. Alice, meanwhile, is now a grade school teacher but she is always looking back to her college days with overwhelming nostalgia. The once inseparable friends and lovers Frankie and Zoe now are worlds apart, with Frankie an unconventional social activist and Zoe an wine-sipping, upscale urbanite mother, who is now separating from her husband.

Alice, who has orchestrated this whole weekend party, is determined to get the old gang back together, and particularly to rekindle her bond with best-friend Jess. Things go wrong when a male stripper they hired ends up dead. Although it was an accident, drugs and liquor lead to all the wrong decisions, and comedy chaos ensues.

Director Aniello and co-writer Paul W. Downs do more than switch the narrative around in this refreshingly real women-centric comedy. The comedy is built around the relationships between the women, not the men in the their lives, and many women in the audience will smile in recognition at several scenes. These women are smart, complicated and out for fun – until they are out to save their skins.

Setting the R-rated, sometimes dark comedy in brightly colored Miami adds the right touch of lightness to the mood, and also provides a fantasy-playground location, where the absurd can happen. One of the best comic bits is the concurrent bachelor party for Jess’ equally buttoned-down groom-to-be Peter (played by co-writer Paul Downs) – a wine tasting. Peter and his friends share their feelings about women while a sommelier serves them pinot noir in an elegant wood-paneled room. A comic bit that references a real-world incident with an astronaut is hilarious.

The film is R-rated, with plenty of raunchy humor, drugs and general misbehavior. Some of the humor around the dead body is a bit edgy, but this barrier has already been crossed in other comedies, including WEEKEND AT BERNIES. But there is nothing so off-putting that the absurd humor does not still come through.

The performers sparkle in this film, both in the comedy and in some dramatic scenes. Scarlett Johansson is terrific as the bride-to-be at the center of this mad weekend, whose mind is always working while just trying to go along with the fun and spirit of things. A running theme is built around her relationship with college bestie Alice. Although this is a comedy, it is also a film about women’s friendships. Both men and women will recognize the dynamic between Jess and Alice, the friend who is almost possessive and always pulling her friend back to the past “glory days.” Both Johansson and Bell portray the layers and the back-and-forth of this dynamic between them brilliantly, particularly in a later confrontation.

Meanwhile, McKinnon is fabulously funny as the crazy one in this group, as well as the unknown quantity as the new girl in the old crowd. McKinnon’s Pippa is endlessly upbeat, and ever ready with the next bad idea or even just the nerve to carry it out, the kind of character who might take to any bad suggestion with a “why not – I’m game” attitude. She’s always the most unpredictable and often the most hilarious in the group.. Her Aussie accent may be less than perfect but the non-American viewpoint is a nice addition to the humor.

Kravitz and Glazer are the other friends-at-odds pair, mirroring the dance between Alice and Jess, but with a different twist. Glazer and Bell also play the sex-obsessed and risk-taking pair contrasting to Johansson’s and Kravitz’s more cautious, are-you-nuts pair. Demi Moore and Ty Burrell add an extra comic twist playing a creepy-funny couple in the neighboring beachfront apartment, next to where the women are staying.

ROUGH NIGHT is just as it says a rough night for these friends but it is overall a refreshing kind of comedy, even if it is not non-stop hilarious. It certainly whets the appetite for more comedies with real women, a largely untapped well of humor just waiting for the next film to dive in.

RATING: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars