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Rough Night, when I saw the Red Band (i.e. sweary) Trailer (at the bottom of this review), looked like a series of rough ideas that should’ve been thrown in the toilet rather than turned into a movie. However, I pride myself on seeing as many films as I can and, sometimes, like with Office Christmas Party, they don’t turn out half as bad as I imagined.
It looks, from the premise, like a white version of Girls Night, and a female version of The Hangover, the latter being a film I only saw recently, and that was pretty poor, and so I won’t be troubling myself with Parts 2 or 3. I haven’t seen Girls Night. I have no plans to watch Girls Night.
It’s also a film in need of a title. Seriously, couldn’t they do any better than “Rough Night“?! Well, originally, they went for Rock That Body, but dumbed it down.
Why the body? Because, after we see the girls finish school in 2006, ten years passes and after we see them meet up for Jess’ (Scarlett Johansson) bacherlorette party and go out drinking, it takes until almost the 30-minute mark until they hire a male stripper… who ends up dead… which we knew would happen, thanks to the trailer. After that, they must dispose of the body, and earlier, all Jess was bothered about was spilling red wine on a white carpet.
Rough Night has vibrator jokes, penis food jokes, jokes about how two of the girls dabbled in lesbianism in school, a lack of chemistry between any of the cast members, Ms Johansson proves comedy is not her forte, while Jillian Bell proves once again that being fat is not a substitute for being funny. Then there’s Kate McKinnon, who puts on a dreadful Aussie accent. And then, despite the threesome scene, men get to show their nipples, but not women…
Bar a minor chuckle in a couple of places, this film all just feels so lazy, and it’s amazing how much of a laugh-free experience it remained. As Jess says at one point, when they’re looking to deal with the body, “We have to think of something… Ideas?” Well, don’t ask the scriptwriters… one of whom also plays her husband-to-be, Peter.
Last year, Kate McKinnon starred in the Ghostbusters reboot, which at least had a decent opening scene but was still the worst film I’d seen all yaer. This film is even worse, and yet still isn’t my worst of 2017, because I’ve seen even worst films.
Oh, and if you’re in need of a side plot, Jess is up for State Senator. Will she win it? Well, there’s also a post-credits scene, and I’ll describe both these ‘extras’ under this spoiler heading:
The film is presented in the original 2.35:1 widescreen ratio and in 1080p high definition and you’d be surprised if it was not a top-notch transfer for a brand new film. Just a shame about what it’s showing.
As for the audio, there’s nothing that made it stand out like a 5.1 surround track should do, so it may as well have been a stereo one.
The extras are as follows:
- Deleted Scenes (9:24): Eleven of them. I’d only put in the ninth, brief, scene. I won’t spoil it before you see it other than it’s one featuring the dead guy, and it added a slight chuckle to the other 2 or 3 in the movie.
- Scandalous sing-along (1:26): Singalong to Kiwi’s end-credits song about killing a man… if you care.
- Naughty Neighbor Diaries (4:33): …or Neighbour, as we say in the UK. You get a video dating clip featuring Pietro (Ty Burrell) and Lea (Demi Moore), and then Q&A with them, asking what they’re looking for.
- Gag Reel (4:13): Outtakes.
- Improv-o-rama (8:37): Ad-libs to the script, shown in-scene.
- Killer Cast (7:53): A behind the scenes piece where all the cast blow smoke up each others’ arses, with interjections from various crew members.
- The Dynamic Duo: Lucia and Paul (4:59): More anal smoke-blowing, this time up the arses of those who wrote/produced/directed etc.
- Playing Dead (2:40): Trying to cast someone who’d be dead.
- Do A Little Dance (3:03): More behind-the-scenes stuff, this time about the dancing in the club.
- Previews: Trailers for films which were also shown before the main menu appeared. They should only ever be in the extras. Since they were shown as soon as I put the disc in, I’m not mentioning them here.
- Audio descriptive track: Does exactly what it says on the tin.
The menu is another half-and-half effort from Sony. Most studios have a mix of clips with a piece of the theme. Sony take a static shot of the cast and shove on a few seconds of music that’s COMPLETELY UNRELATED! On the plus side, whereas most studios just plump for English only audio and subtitles, Sony have the film in seven languages (all in DTS 5.1), with English also in DTS HD-MA 5.1, while subtitles come in a staggering 25 languages! There’s also 16 chapters, which is a few more than most studios’ 12, but still not enough for my preference of one every five minutes, so it’s close (it would be 20).
Rough Night is released on December 26th on Blu-ray, Amazon Video and DVD, and click on the packshot for the full-size image.
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FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS |
0.5 10 7 4 |
| OVERALL | 5.5 |
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 101 minutes
Studio: Sony Pictures
Cat.no.: PRJ889702BD
Year: 2017
Released: December 26th 2017
Chapters: 16
Picture: 1080p High Definition
Sound: DTS HD Master Audio 5.1
Languages (all in DTS 5.1 sound): English (also DTS 5.1 HD-MA), Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Thai, Turkish
Subtitles: English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portugese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, Thai, Turkish
Format: 2.35:1
Disc Format: BD50
Director: Lucia Aniello
Producers: Lucia Aniello and Paul W Downs
Screenplay: Lucia Aniello and Paul W Downs
Music: Dominic Lewis
Cast:
Jess: Scarlett Johansson
Alice: Jillian Bell
Blair: Zoë Kravitz
Frankie: Ilana Glazer
Kiwi: Kate McKinnon
Peter: Paul W Downs
Jay: Ryan Cooper
Pietro: Ty Burrell
Lea: Demi Moore
Detective Ruiz: Enrique Murciano
Detective Frazier: Dean Winters
Real Scotty: Colton Haynes
Patrick: Patrick Carlyle
Jake: Eric André
Tobey: Bo Burnham
Joe: Hasan Minhaj
Raviv: Karan Soni
Lisa: Laura Grey
Malcolm: Mark Tallman
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.