Rough Night

18 June 2017. This female version of the raunchy wild night out genre offers up a lot that the typical storyline of past such movies have tread. Yet there seems to be a more nuanced emotional bonding and reflective, albeit drugged mindfulness or least an attempt at one than the completely dumb-witted male outings of other movies. The significantly higher IMDb ratings among young and older females over males might suggest either the pent up sexist lack of a predominant female presence in the immoral, debauchery of in past movies is being acknowledged or that there is an increased appreciation for how there might be a vague underlying morality that women continue to hold onto even when their mental faculties are diminished. This summer dark comedy of entertainment is supposed to be crazy. The fragile balance between graphic harder edged violence, emotional drama, and slapstick comedy along with one line gutter humor is strewn throughout with some intelligence at times. At least this movie is not boringly a rubber stamped product of the same dialogue, same characters, same outcomes directed in the same way as all the others. There is a attempt here for a more glaring emotional punch in your face with grittier harsher, female deviltry that isn't always politely acceptable on its face. Yet the eventual camaraderie among female friends and how they do so seems much more qualitatively distinctive in a much more compelling and attractive way that ultimately makes this movie a cut above.

Jess (Scarlett Johansson) is running for public office with a prude image. She goes to Miami with three old college friends and an Aussie friend for a bachelorette weekend only to have the film go south as the scripts deviates from the whole bachelorette story into a murder cover up. Kate McKinnon was great, Jillian Bell acceptable and the rest don't know how to do comedy. NO NO NO This is not as funny as "Bridesmaid.' Kristen Wiig got more laughs in one airplane scene than this whole film. If you watch the previews,you have seen all of the film worth watching. F-word. Sex talk. Near nudity (Demi Moore is in it.)

For those of you who follow my reviews or know me personally would know that I just don't like comedies. I hardly ever laugh, find them cringeworthy and would rather watch a depressing film about a serial killer. But here we are, a film that has surprised me and made me laugh. Not once. Not twice. We're talking multiple occasions. What!? Gasp. Shock. Horror. I thought Rough Night was hilarious. I don't know if it's because I was hyper on confectionary goodness and sugary drinks but yes I enjoyed the hell out of this. We follow a group of girls who throw a bachelorette party for one of their friends. Clubs, drinking, drugs and the attempted removal of a guy they just killed. I shouldn't have liked this, reason being is that it's just another formulaic comedy where our characters relive the past only for the present to hit them in the face, they argue and make up. The end. So yes, it is formulaic. It also dragged towards the end and the laughs started to become inconsistent. But...but but but...the majority of the runtime was packed with hilarity and that's pretty much down to the script and charismatic performances. Scarlett Johansson was fantastic, I was slightly "meh" at the beginning but warmed to her comedic timing. Kate McKinnon though, stole the whole damn film. Her forced Australian accent just killed me. Yet again, her exaggerated acting and dialogue execution just made her hilarious. Demi Moore though...yikes! Good on her but...yikes! The scenarios that are characters are put under were varied, somewhat inventive and outrageously funny. Particularly scenes where they attempt to hide the body, who knew glasses with a phallic shaped object attached would make me laugh (immature...I know). I thought the script was pretty consistent throughout, there were times where jokes didn't always hit but for the most part I either smiled or laughed out loud. I needed to be cheered up, I needed a laugh, I needed a good time. This film did all that successfully.

I watched this without looking at any reviews and actually really enjoyed it. It wasn't perfect but was still fun and entertaining and I did actually laugh out loud a good few times and felt good after watching it! Then I went on here to check out the reviews out of curiosity and they were terrible which would have made me not watch it! But I just wanted to say I did actually like it as a good fun girly movie!

Gawd, who is this movie written for? Is it just an automatic money making "no-brainer" (and I mean that literally) to have a female coterie reunite years later for alcohol, partying, clubbing, male * all at an exclusive vacation locale? Plot has been done too many times including guys' versions. Fifty years of progress in portraying intelligent resourceful women has been reduced and characterized to loud intoxicated "b..hes" trying to outdo each other in acting the stupidest. Oh, more dumbness in added subplot of some stranger dying which expands into a not believable, suppose to be funny, crime clean up mess which itself has been done too many times in film. Demi Moore makes a brief appearance and as in "Blind" shows little acting skill. In both films she basically just hangs on some guy and smiles.

'ROUGH NIGHT': Three and a Half Stars (Out of Five) A dark comedy involving five friends that meet for a bachelorette party in Miami, ten years after four of them went to school together, and things go horribly wrong when they accidentally kill a male *. It stars Scarlett Johansson, Jillian Bell, Zoe Kravitz, Kate McKinnon and Ilana Glazer. Paul W. Downs, Demi Moore and Ty Burrell also costar in the film. It was directed by first time feature filmmaker Lucia Aniello, and it was written by Aniello and Downs (the duo also co-produced the flick). The movie's gotten better than average reviews from critics, but it's disappointed at the Box Office so far (many think for sexist reasons). I enjoyed it. Jess (Johansson) is a somewhat successful politician that's currently running for office. She's also about to be married, and going on a bachelorette party, in Miami, with three old college friends (Bell, Kravitz and Glazer); whom she's become distant with over the years. Jess also invites her new friend, Pippa (McKinnon), who the others meet for the first time. After the girls all do cocaine together, and party at the clubs, they hire a *. When one of the friends accidentally kills the *, the women all panic and make things worse by trying to conceal their crime. The women all (of course) bond in the process. The movie is funny, crude and very dark (until the end at least); all things that are great to see in a female driven film. The story is similar to a lot of previous dark male comedies though, but it's nice to see a female twist on it at least. I think all of the actresses do a good job in the movie, and it's mostly funny. I was disappointed with the climax though, which kind of gives the film a little bit too much of a lighter (more happy) ending. I don't want to ruin it for you, but the film is definitely not as dark as it promises to be. Watch our movie review show 'MOVIE TALK' at: https://youtu.be/W6So6Kz52VQ

Jess (played by Scarlett Johansson who was better than I thought she'd be) is getting married soon. Her friends from college decide to plan a debauchery getaway for her in Miami, Florida. They party hard on their first night in the Magic City by hitting a club, snorting some cocaine, and getting real drunk. They then head back to their vacation home. While at said home, the five women hire a * and accidentally kill him. Oops! That's the gist of Rough Night, my latest review. Modeling the female version of movies like The Hangover, Very Bad Things, and Weekend at Bernie's, "Night" has a few laughs and even trudges slightly into black comedy territory. My reason for a mixed rating however, is simple: Rough Night isn't as dark or risk-taking as "Things" and it isn't as funny as "Hangover". As for "Bernie's", well "Night" only hints at the mocking of a dead body during a couple of scenes in the trailer. Those scenes were obviously left on the cutting room floor. Distributed by Columbia Pictures and clocking in at just over 100 minutes, Rough Night is standard yet shoddily directed by Lucia Aniello (this is her feature film debut). She provides "Night" with the usual shtick for a hard, R-rated endeavor. There's some drug references (and drug use), some heavy sexual innuendo, and some vulgar, unladylike language. Some of the material sticks and some of it awkwardly bounces off. As for Aniello's group of actresses (Zoe Kravitz, Jillian Bell, and Kate McKinnon to name three), well they're stiff at first but then gel together with variably decent chemistry. This is despite some real odd casting choices in the form of Johansson (mentioned earlier) as a woman running for state senate and Demi Moore as one half of a neighboring, swinging couple. Strangely, the most humorous sequences in Rough Night involve Jess's fiancé named Peter (played by Paul W. Downs). He thinks she doesn't want to marry him anymore so he quickly drives straight from Washington D.C. to Miami in a diaper (just revert back to that astronaut story with Lisa Nowak in 2007). This is all done to win Jess back (talk about bad miscommunication). In conclusion, if I had to decipher the biggest flaw in "Night", it would be the ending. I won't give anything away but it feels as though the screenwriters ran out of ideas, threw in a regimented twist, and abruptly copped out on real-life culminations (the five friends could never fully get away with what they did). Talk about borderline hackwork. Overall, Rough Night gets two and a half stars from this critic. It could serve as a harmless rental when it eventually comes out on DVD.