Christmas movies; what monotonous, repetitive, cliched pieces of shit that, nine out of ten times is cynically churned out by studios to capitalise on the small portion of people who want to be reminded of the Christmas spirit that is already attacking them from every angle from November first through until Christmas Day itself. It almost makes you want to get drunk and take drugs instead of watching Christmas movies, thankfully man-child stoner Seth Rogen has at least produced a movie that doesn’t require you to drink and take drugs because it’s already up there on screen.
The Night Before is the latest Seth Rogen vehicle where he, Anthony Mackie and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are life-long friends who are having one last hoorah during their annual evening of debauchery on Christmas Eve as they make their way to the clandestine Nutcracka Ball, the Christmas party to end all Christmas parties. Like any Seth Rogen fare, the story is about bros learning to grow up and adjust to being adults while taking copious amounts of drugs and referencing that fact that he’s Jewish as often as possible.
The film itself has a lot going for it: it’s incredibly funny, the key cast have great chemistry and there are lots of references to things you loved from the early 90’s including Micro Machines, Nintendo 64’s Goldeneye and Home Alone. As a man in his mid-30’s Rogen certainly knows how to appeal to my inner-child. Another great strength, like all of Rogen’s films,is that he really has a knack for creating genuine and authentic feeling relationships and concerns for his key characters. The characters are always able to articulate thoughts and feelings we’ve all had at one point or another, whether we want to admit it or not.
Another great addition to the film is the inclusion of Boardwalk Empire’s Michael Shannon as Mr. Green, a super-creepy drug dealer and spiritual mentor to the trio in a weed-dealing version of the Ghost of Christmas Past, Present and Future.
However, for all the positives, it’s hard to deny that there is nothing surprising or new in this latest adventure. Sure it is funny, it’s filled with lots of dirty and guilty jokes, but almost all of the story elements are predictable and repetitive due to the film being so reliant on the “Rogen Template.” You know the template I’m talking about: drugs, bros do stupid stuff, Rogen’s buddy cameos, butt-stuff, more drugs, bros fight, and of course the random cameo of a musician or sports star who is referenced earlier in the film during a throwaway line only to appear in the third act to offer sage-like advice to our heroes. As I said, it is funny, but you pretty much see every story beat coming before it happens, so it kind of takes the impact out of the comedy.
When you look back at Rogen’s career, he’s been doing the whole man-child attempting to grow up and take adult responsibilities for the last ten years. The Night Before is certainly an improvement on last year’s The Interview, but some of the same complaints are still there, his routine is starting to become too routine. One can’t help but wonder how many movies he has left in him doing this schtick before he hits Adam Sandler level of repetition.
At the end of the day, there’s only a small handful of good Christmas movies: It’s A Wonderful Life, Die Hard and Bad Santa; the rest are just awful. Now we have another Christmas movie that fits in that small handful, it’s certainly not as good as Die Hard but it doesn’t fit in the awful pile.
The Night Before gets Three out of Five Stars (or Three out of Five weed-dealing creepy dudes giving you advice you don’t need - and just for the record: that’s not me)
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