While most everyone enjoys a good Christmas movie this time of
year, one that gift wraps themes of family, friendship, and faith, others enjoy
something that can take those ideas and wrap them in a healthy dose of drug and
toilet humor. A film like Bad Santa immediately comes to mind as the
nearly-impossible bar to reach, but The
Night Before deserves to at
least be in the same conversation with that holiday classic. Like the bastard
offspring of Pineapple Express and Scrooged,
this is a film that manages to stay incredibly sweet and endearing while
wrapped in a cloud of weed smoke. It's bound to become an annual holiday
tradition in a ton of households.
Writer/director Jonathan Levine gets a
chance to reunite Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who he worked with on
the cancer comedy, 50/50,
and once again he's taking some heavy themes and putting a fine touch of tinsel
all over them. This time they're joined by the infinite cool of Anthony Mackie,
who rounds out their nerdy trio of best friends having one final Christmas Eve
bash through the streets of Manhattan. Isaac (Rogen), Chris (Mackie), and Ethan
(Gordon-Levitt) have been best friends for years, ever since Ethan was orphaned
while in college. Each year they celebrate the holidays together, but life is
starting to get in the way. Chris is a famous football star now, while Isaac is
about to become a parent for the first time. It's Ethan who is the odd man out;
his life isn't really going anywhere, his girlfriend (Lizzie Caplan) dumped
him, and he's working as an elf for the Christmas season.
As fortune and a little bit of thievery
would have it, Ethan gets his hands on tickets to the sickest Christmas bash in
the city, promising their final blowout will be one to remember. And how could
it not be when Chris has them hauling around town in a giant Red Bull
limousine, and Isaac is stoned out of his mind thanks to his pregnant wife's
(Jillian Bell) gift of every drug on the planet. Ethan is put in the position
of trying to keep his buddies on track spending time with one another rather
than on their encroaching responsibilities, but can there really be such a
thing when you grow up? The film posits whether it's possible to maintain
friendships when family and career take precedent.
So right off the bat this isn't just
another film about overgrown irresponsible man-children, it's about two guys
who have accepted the burdens that come with maturity, and one who is afraid of
losing the only family he has left. That said, they go through some
off-the-wall stuff before figuring all that out, and the screenplay by Levine,
Rogen, and others excels when it balances the believable with the bizarre.
Clearly inspired to make an insane version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, the
film features Michael Shannon stealing the whole f'n show as the mysterious
"Mr. Green". Shannon's quiet intensity (he even mentions it) has
never been used to such great comedic effect, and every time he pops up, which
thankfully is just enough and not too much, the film gets even funnier. But the
main trio is great together, too, with Rogen getting to embrace the lovable
stoner lug role he kind of left behind when he started making movies like Steve
Jobs. Gordon-Levitt is the straight-man, and he's got such great emotional
range that we can fully understand Ethan's trepidation over losing his friends.
And then there's Mackie, who gets saddled with a weird steroid subplot and a
weirder storyline involving a "Grinch" played by Broad City's Ilana Glazer,
but he's always the guy who feels like he's just playing himself. In his case,
that's a good thing. Even the female roles are given more attention than they
typically are in these bro-comedies. Bell isn't saddled with the
"overbearing wife" role that we usually find in these movies, and
Caplan is perhaps the most real character of them all. In one scene, featuring
a totally unexpected cameo by a huge celebrity, she basically shuts down all of
those "love conquers all" fantasies that holiday movies tend to
traffic in.
Overall, The
Night Before is just plain
fun. Levine has never met an old school rap jam he didn't like, and whether
it's Run DMC's "Christmas in Hollis" or Pete Rock and CL Smooth's
"The Creator", there's plenty of it to go around. While one expects
there to be a happy ending with plenty of good tidings and good cheer, the
sentiments are small and honest without going overboard. The Night Before is easily the best Christmas movie arriving this
season, and it should be a gift that keeps on giving for a long time to come.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
