The Night Before (2015)

Three lifelong friends who are about to spend their last Christmas together get tickets to a party that will put their lives into perspective.

Vulgar language, anecdotal situations, surreal characters… anything you can expect from a Rogen/Goldberg production. Co-writer/director Jonathan Levine teams up again with Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt after 50/50 (2011) and with the amazing Anthony Mackie joining the crew… the fun has started already. On second thought, more or less, everyone has worked with someone else more than once in the past. And, of course, James Franco pops up! Oh, did I mention Michael Shannon, Lizzy Caplan, and Mindy Kaling? This is quite the gang.

This is a trippy journey that, in its vast majority, is very much to the bone. References to Die Hard (1988), Home Alone (1990) and Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol”, make it a great buddy Christmas film, especially in times like these. Ultimately, it’s very predictable but you wouldn’t expect anything else from a Christmas movie, even an R-rated one. In all honesty, the church sequence is hilarious, and the confession moment at Caplan’s front door is quite funny. Then, the amount of improvisation by almost everyone is also admirable.

Love or loathe it, that is the kind of comedy you sign up for. Should you decide to watch it, go along. We all deserve a laugh these days.

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Solidarity for all the innocent lives who suffer the atrocities of war!

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