Review: Rough Night

There are few things in the bachelorette-weekend-from-hell comedy Rough Night that one hasn't seen before in films like Very Bad Things, The Hangover, Bridesmaids, and Bachelorette, but it doesn't prevent it from being an enjoyable romp. Like the latter two films and last year's Bad Moms, Rough Night puts women front and center and shows that they can behave as badly and do down and dirty debauchery as well as their male counterparts.

Congregating in Miami for the weekend are college chums Jess (Scarlett Johansson), Alice (Jillian Bell), Frankie (Ilana Glazer), and Blair (Zoë Kravitz). Jess is the bride-to-be, a buttoned-up sort in the midst of a political campaign who'd rather spend some quiet time with her fiancé Peter (Paul W. Downs, who also co-wrote the screenplay) than a rowdy weekend with her girlfriends. Alice is her freshman year roommate who has overzealously organised the weekend's activities to the half hour and who is almost frighteningly too gung-ho about being able to spend time with Jess. Frankie is a lesbian and activist, whilst Blair is a sleekly-attired real estate agent in the midst of a bitter split with her husband.

The first wrench that gets thrown into Alice's plans is the appearance of Pippa (Kate McKinnon), Jess's Australian friend from her college semester abroad. Alice is none too happy about this interloper who professes that "singer-songwriter is the dream, party clown is the reality," and she prickles at every display of their friendship. Yet something more important douses the party atmosphere when Alice accidentally kills the stripper Frankie hired, and the group are soon caught in a whirlwind of panic as they try to figure out what to do with the body.

There are sub-plots involving the swinging couple (Demi Moore and Ty Burrell), whom Blair must seduce in order to gain access to the surveillance videos that may have caught the women getting rid of the body, as well as Peter mistakenly believing that Jess called off their wedding during a phone call. Egged on by his buddies, Peter goes on an all-night-drive to win her back. The latter works better if only because there are more comic angles to play, though Kravitz sells Blair's shellshocked self-discovery post-ménage à trois ("She was inside me. She was outside me. And then she was me.") in the former.

The main event though is the comic battle royale between expert scene-stealers McKinnon and Bell. McKinnon's delivery is aces - every line that comes out of her mouth, no matter how ordinary, garners laughs. Bell matches her line for line ("I have Advil. It's extra strength, bitch!" she says, offering it as a remedy for taking care of the dead stripper), but she also roots Alice's possessiveness of Jess in something very real and relatable, and it pays emotional dividends when Alice and Jess confront each other with some very hurtful truths.

Rough Night

Directed by: Lucia Aniello

Written by: Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs

Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Zoë Kravitz, Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, Ilana Glazer, Demi Moore, Paul W. Downs, Ty Burrell, Colton Haynes, Dean Winters, Hasan Minhaj