A Night at the Roxbury

[StevePulaski]

A Night at the Roxbury (1998)
Directed by: John Fortenberry

Rating: ★

We can thank producer Lorne Michaels for giving us such wonderful comedies like both Wayne's World films, but we can also blame him for giving other Saturday Night Live characters their due in feature-length films when some of them barely had the charisma to carry two minute long sketches. From The Ladies Man to Superstar to MacGruber to now A Night at the Roxbury, Michaels has sought out each Saturday Night Live character and exhausted every opportunity that could be done with the character.

Whether or not that's a good thing or a bad thing is your opinion, but in my own humble one, each one of these SNL films has been a mediocre, less-than-average affair, with A Night at the Roxbury easily cementing itself as the worst film from the long-running sketch comedy series thus far. This is one of the most grueling comedies I've seen in quite a while; one that seemingly struggles to concoct a coherent plot and instead resorts to cheap skits that cobble themselves together and frequently punctuate themselves with the agonizing tune "What is Love" by Haddaway.

This combined with the abysmal ratings makes it hard to believe that Will Ferrell became a sizable star after allowing this film to be his debut leading role. However, not long after the release of this film did Ferrell find ways to make his absurdist-style of humor known and demanded throughout the world. But when it comes to A Night at the Roxbury, both Ferrell and Chris Kattan find ways to be grating and dimwitted to the point where comedy doesn't even seem to register on the radar.

Ferrell and Kattan play the brainless Butabi brothers, Steve and Doug, two young club-freaks who have a love for hard-partying. The only issue is that both of the morons never seem to get access to their desired club, the L.A.-based Roxbury due to the club's love for high-profile celebrities over the common people. By day, Steve and Doug mindlessly slave away, running their family-owned fake plant store, anxiously anticipating all the night has to offer.

The plot kicks in when the van Steve and Doug are driving to The Roxbury is rear-ended by 21 Jump Street's Richard Grieco, who agrees to allow them access to the elusive nightclub in hopes the two don't press charges for the fender-bender. Finally, Steve and Doug no longer have to live in the shadows of their favorite club and can be one with the party. A subplot also involves the woman who works next door to the plant-store named Emily (Molly Shannon) at a lamp store, cutely named "Bright Idea." The brothers' father blatantly hopes that Steve will wise up one day and marry Emily so that the wall between the two stores can be demolished, effectively creating the first ever plant/lamp store.

So A Night at the Roxbury goes on, doing what I thought was impossible in the regard that it makes seventy-seven minutes feel like an unreasonable, laborious amount of time for a film. With the notable exceptions of The Blues Brothers and the two Wayne's World films, each SNL-adaptation has run into this issue, only proving that these particular characters, setups, and instances were never originally intended to sustain feature-length but rather two to three minutes on an hour-long sketch show. And even at their original intention and length, I don't find these particular characters funny. The opening credits show them forcefully gyrating against women and frantically dancing in a crowded nightclub, illustrating pretty much what the sketch comedy skits were like and even those weren't that funny.

Just last week in my high school journalism class, learning about satire and parody, we watched numerous faux-commercials from SNL taken from as far back as the 1970's to the present. I, shockingly, found none of them funny and surprisingly desperate attempts at generating humor from what seemed like a child creating names to coincide with stupid products. I state that this because maybe it's not just that the excitement and interest of this concept involving two brothers who frequent nightclubs and embrace the party entirely alludes me but the excitement and interest of SNL alludes me. I couldn't tell you.

Starring: Will Ferrell, Chris Kattan, Molly Shannon, Michael Clarke Duncan, Richard Grieco, and Loni Anderson. Directed by: John Fortenberry.