The Night Before

When the ston­er movie pulled a crack­er with the Christ­mas movie, things went typ­i­cal­ly, trag­i­cal­ly awry. Three chest-bump­ing dude­bros – played by Seth Rogen, Joseph Gor­don-Levitt and Antho­ny Mack­ie – ful­fil an annu­al tra­di­tion of get­ting blotto’d on Christ­mas Eve. They do so as a way to pre­serve the inno­cence of their youth and their sta­tus as a racial­ly and reli­gious­ly diverse fam­i­ly unit.

Where real life has caught up with Rogen’s lawyer and par­ent-to be, Isaac, and Mackie’s social media savvy foot­baller star, Chris, it has yet to sink its claws into Gordon-Levitt’s sad-sack, Ethan. There’s a rea­son for this, as this cus­tom was born out of the fact that Ethan’s par­ents were killed dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son, and Isaac and Chris stepped in to con­sole this decrepit soul.

From this short descrip­tion, you’d have to have been brought up in a cap­sule on the Moon and par­ti­tioned from all pop­u­lar fic­tion cre­at­ed through­out the his­to­ry of mankind to not know how this one plays out. Their vale­dic­to­ry Yule­tide blow-out turns into a night of intro­spec­tion, and the rick­ety foun­da­tions of their union is bol­stered for years to come through plucky adven­ture, sea­son­al cheer and com­e­dy jumpers. The Mount Doom of this lagered-up quest movie is a mys­te­ri­ous invite-only par­ty known as the Nut­crack­er Ball which has, over the years, gained a cer­tain clan­des­tine noto­ri­ety. Ethan scores some tick­ets, and this night before adult­hood final­ly has its purpose.

Where the film falls down is on a nuts-and-bolts lev­el, in that it is just nev­er that fun­ny. Plus, no amount of faux cama­raderie and invent­ed nos­tal­gia can be thrown at the screen to make the view­er believe that these three guys are and always have been best buds. While the three leads are seri­ous­ly lack­ing in the LOL depart­ment, thank the Lord for Michael Shan­non, play­ing it straight as a burn-out drug deal­er and mak­ing you wish that the movie was about his char­ac­ter. With sundry sac­ri­lege, dick pix and man­ic behav­iour fuelled by a cock­tail of drugs bought from CraigsList, The Night Before – like a com­e­dy Bub­ble and Squeak – is lots of stodgy left­overs mulched up so as not to let it go to waste.