Best Night Ever (2014)

[StevePulaski]

Best Night Ever (2014)
Directed by: Jason Freidberg and Aaron Seltzer

Rating: ★½

One must give longtime parody directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer some credit for branching out into new territory with their latest film, Best Night Ever. Being that the duo has grossed millions upon millions of dollars with each abysmal parody film after another, the duo had really no reason to stray from their niche; they found something that worked and made them a great deal of money each time. Why become diverse when they've already stuck gold?

But randomly and all of a sudden, a film by the name of Best Night Ever was thrown into production by them, a raunchy comedy centered on an all female cast of characters who are hitting Las Vegas for their one friend's bachelorette party, which turns into a messy state of affairs after they are robbed for their money, purses, shoes, and their jewelry, including ones expensive wedding ring.

What ostensibly would play like an exciting and fun romp akin to Bridesmaids, or even The Hangover, however, turns overly-crass, shamelessly raunchy without even a hint of wit or subtlety, and exhausting by the thirty minute mark. As someone who was slightly (but cautiously) optimistic about how Friedberg and Seltzer's style of comedy would be conducted for a film wasn't a competition for references, I was disappointed (but unsurprised) that their humor outside of overcompensating references is largely predicated off of grotesque shock humor, where the female characters say and do the most revolting things in hopes they are funny enough for the audience. Lines like "My g-string is like a slip and slide" and witnessing a woman urinate and defecate on an innocent man's face is what we have to succumb to watching Best Night Ever.

The four female leads have almost no personality, so why refer to them by their names? Let's call them what they are; The Bride-to-Be (Desiree Hall), The Uppity Sister of the Bride-to-Be (Samantha Colburn), The Obnoxious Best Friend of the Bride-to-Be (Eddie Ritchard), and The Lewd and Dirty-Mouthed Friend of the Bride-to-Be (Crista Flanagan) all set out to have a fun girls night out, filming their travels thanks to the help of a handheld camera. After The Obnoxious Best Friend of the Bride to Be tries to make a cocaine deal after the girls get kicked out of a strip club, the quartet of girls are robbed for everything they have and must find a way to get money in the heartland of Vegas so they can return home.

It's a tad frightening how much Friedberg and Seltzer seem to hate their female characters. The movie predicates itself off of showing them getting into trouble, being entirely irresponsible, childish, petty, and downright annoying, with consequences to their behavior at every turn that are ugly and downright cruel. Think Spring Breakers with none of the social commentary nor insights; this is true bad behavior on display with nothing significant to say at all.

The film is almost entirely comprised of scenes involving total hell breaking loose, chaotic parties, and the girls racing from place to place in a stolen limo. The editing here, is disastrous, with the handheld-camera being another useless gimmick, and cuts, shots, and entire sequences being assembled in an incoherent order. The entire cut-and-paste editing job here fails to give the scenes in the film any feelings of placement and basic structure and, in turn, we get a cacophony of madness in the sound and editing department.

Speaking of sound, in addition, towards the second and third act, almost the entirety of character dialog is comprised of obnoxious screaming, yelling, and exhaustive, high-pitched noise. This style is absurd and annoying, especially when one realizes this is what the film substituted actual character development for.

What we have here, in summation, is an attempt at something "new" for the directors that revolves around making female characters look disturbingly irresponsible and juvenile, characters who don't even deserve an assigned name, repetitive and downright unfunny shock humor, awful editing, and a script where about two-thirds of the lines of dialog are written out as *high-pitched screams from all the girls.* It almost becomes bad enough to the point where saying that the film is better than Friedberg and Seltzer other films isn't even an accurate statement.

Starring: Desiree Hall, Samantha Colburn, Eddie Ritchard, and Crista Flanagan. Directed by: Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer.