The Night Before (dir. Jonathan Levine, 2015)
I felt so tired watching The Night Before. It’s not a bad film. It’s competently made, decently acted. I laughed at a number of scenes. I have enjoyed a number of things with Joseph Gordon Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anthony Mackie, and everyone but James Franco. But something about this broish comedy about three friends’ last debauched Christmas celebration before becoming grown ass adults in their mid-thirties was exhausting for me. Maybe it was the pacing or the loose structure. Maybe it was the fact that even though I am younger than the characters in the film, the thought of doing even a tenth of the drugs or fun depicted on screen makes me just want to lie down and take a nap. I do not want to go to multiple locations in a night. I want to stay in the one bar until, like, 11:30 and go home.
More than that, though, the film feels so disconnected from any recognizable reality now. It’s only four years old, but it feels like it’s from some lost era. I suppose Obama’s second term was that, back when anyone above a certain income threshold could ignore a whole host of issues and problems and actually do that asinine secret party thing while wearing a kitschy Christmas sweater.
Michael Shannon’s pretty great in it, though.
oliveresque 