Name me one good Hollywood festive movie since Home Alone? Exactly, you can't! And yet each year they are foisted up us like an unwelcome drunken pass at a Christmas party. Novelty jumpers are donned and nominally credible actors run through the paces of getting back in time for the 'holidays' or endure some contrivance whereby they are forced into the company of misfit family members (I'm looking at you Christmas with the Coopers) or estranged ex-lovers. Cue the fake snow and schmaltzy hugs.
This year, what with the upcoming release of S*** W***, there's less of the typical yuletide caper troubling your local cineplex. But fear not, The Night Before will fill that snowflake-shaped void. The film delivers all the Christmas trimmings while thankfully managing to serve up enough warmth and genuine laughs to keep even the biggest movie-going Grinch happy. Oh, and there's even a nice nod to Home Alone along the way.
Essentially a jolly Bro Bro Bro-mance (you can just hear the pitch) the movie reunites 50/50 co-stars Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon Levitt and they have a new sidekick in Anthony Mackie. They are three unwise men hitting the town for their final Christmas Eve get-together before Rogen's character becomes a dad.
Borrowing heavily from the Judd Apatow handbook, director and writer Jonathan Levine squares off Gordon Levitt's Ethan, a man-child, failed musician and commitment-phobe, with his two buddies Issac (Rogen), a nervous first time father, and Chris (Mackie) a pro-footballer who's finally made a name for himself.
Armed with a heroic quantity of drugs, courtesy of Issac's missus, the trio heads off into the night in search of the legendary Nutcracker Ball Christmas Party. Along the way festive jumpers are procured, the FAO Schwartz floor piano is called into action (there's your Big reference bingo-players), nostalgia is given its moment along with some scrapping and puking all performed against the soundtrack of obligatory Jewish jokes (Rogen dons a Star of David on his jumper for much of the film) and some of the most breathtaking product placement you've seen since the last Bond outing. And before you ask, yes there is a family reconciliation and an unresolved break-up hovering in the background.
The many laughs may not be subtle, but it all breezes along with such pithy irreverence during its brisk 101 minutes that you're willing to forgive the predictable turns, surreal nods to A Christmas Carol - thanks to some pot induced visions courtesy of Michael Shannon's superbly laconic drug dealer - not to mention forced cameos from the likes of Miley Cyrus and (bet you didn't see this coming!) James Franco.
But the movie's trump card is the undeniable chemistry between all three leads, with Rogen in particular milking his hung-dog comic delivery for all it's worth. His perfectly ad-libbed turn while 'off his bin' on a drugs cocktail is worth the price of admission alone. All in all, one of the best Christmas movies in recent years, even if the 'holidays' are a vehicle rather than a destination for the plot - such that it is. God bless, us everyone!
John O'Driscoll
