Unholy trinity get merry in NYC romp
Typically goofy Rogen antics lighten occasionally dour The Night Before
There is a thick helping of sentimental icing on top of this very Seth Rogen-y gingerbread bro-down, some background stuff about dead parents and finding family that seems mildly heavy for a comedy with a central (and top-drawer) joke about some questionable photos. My guess is that we have director/co-writer Jonathan Levine to thank: his cancer comedy 50/50 — also starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and shepherded by Rogen — was one of the few films in the Rogen nexus to actually dwell in uncomfortable darkness for stretches, and his other writing, especially The Wackness, tends to rely on sentiment to ground goofier antics.
It feels like a weird misstep in The Night Before — a sketchy, drug-fuelled romp through New York on Christmas Eve — always threatening to stamp out the antics so Gordon-Levitt can act all sad for a while. The good news is that while it gets in the way from time to time, The Night Before is loose and wild enough that it’s easy to forget the backstory and just revel in ridiculousness.
The excuse for setting Gordon-Levitt, Rogen and Anthony Mackie loose on the city is that they’re a trio of longtime friends out for one last yuletide-flavoured hurrah; the sad backstory is that it’s a tradition that started after Gordon-Levitt’s parents died, and though he clings to it as both a ritual and a high point in his emotionally arrested life, his friends are moving on, Rogen with a family and Mackie with a burgeoning career as a football player.
Things look up when Gordon-Levitt manages to snag some tickets to an elusive, out-ofcontrol party they’ve been trying to attend for years, and then he runs into his ex, a walking reminder of how little he’s doing with himself.
Once we get past all that, though, it’s the usual Rogen shenanigans, with some really game players. Rogen is given a box full of drugs by his wife, and his battles to balance out mushrooms with cocaine (and ecstasy and pot and?), are the movie’s funniest bits.
Mackie and Gordon-Levitt have their moments too, even if the latter is too often weighed down by being the moody centrepiece. Mackie has a pretty nice exchange with Broad City’s Ilana Glazer, who is living out her favourite anti-Christmas movies. Both are overshadowed by Michael Shannon, who brings his usual intensity to the role of a deadpan drug dealer — in a performance and bit as utterly weird as all the dead-parents stuff is dour.
The fact that those two things can live together is some indication of how shaggy but totally fun The Night Before is.