“The Night Before” brings a new kind of Christmas cheer
This season’s best bet for a holiday classic
L-r, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen and Anthony Mackie star Columbia Pictures’ “The Night Before.”
December 9, 2015
A holiday comedy, done right, is one of the best parts about Christmastime. As a kid, this meant watching “How The Grinch Stole Christmas” and laughing at Cindy Lou Who’s ridiculous hair. But now, the term begs for a more sophisticated definition, and by sophisticated, I mean a movie with characters that swear, do drugs, get drunk and vomit at midnight mass. I mean “The Night Before.”
Easily the least tame of the bunch, “The Night Before” joins the ranks of “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation,” “A Christmas Story,” “Home Alone,” “Elf,” and others in the Christmas comedy genre as a good example of when “funny” and “holiday” go hand in hand. The catch is that while the rest of these films are “fun for the whole family,” this movie’s R rating is a definite sign you should not bring your younger cousin to see it, or grandma for that matter.
It’s a simple enough concept: take your stereotypical Seth Rogen movie— complete with drugs, alcohol, nudity and swearing—and set it on Christmas Eve. Rogen plays Isaac, who, with best friends Ethan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Chris (Anthony Mackie), has spent the past 15 years partying every Christmas Eve, hoping to find tickets to the exclusive and elite Nutcracka Ball. On the last year of their holiday tradition, the trio get lucky enough to (illegally) find tickets to the ball, where the promise of “every drug ever made” and meeting women is a given. ‘Tis the season I suppose.
Going into the film, I expected this to be a classic “Die Hard” scenario. While half the population defines “Die Hard” as a holiday film, the other half insists that just because the film takes place at Christmastime doesn’t make it a Christmas movie. While the title of “The Night Before” suggested otherwise, I expected the comedy aspect to trump any Christmas themes throughout the film. Honestly, it didn’t seem realistic that a film starring Rogen could have any sort of holiday spirit, and yet, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
While completely unconventional as a holiday film, “The Night Before” uses every opportunity to throw conventional Christmas movie clichés in the audience’s face. The opening scene is of a leather-bound book, pages turning to the sound of Tracy Morgan narrating in rhymes. Whimsical jingle bells and chimes serve as the background music for much of the film, with a few Christmas carol classics thrown in as well. Isaac, Chris and Ethan even spend the majority of the film in tacky holiday sweaters (although Isaac’s is embroidered with the star of David because he’s Jewish).
While the film pokes fun at traditional holiday movies, it simultaneously uses these time-honored themes to further its own corny message about love, friendship and holiday spirit. However, the corniness is actually a welcomed addition since it serves as a sweet take away from an otherwise raunchy 2 hours. It’s the most one can expect from a movie with not one, not two but three drug deals.
In short: if you’re looking for a conventional, heartwarming tale of the triumph of the Christmas spirit, I would stick with “White Christmas.” But if you want a refreshing, contemporary, hilarious take on the Christmas caper classic, put “The Night Before” on your Christmas list.
Bee • Dec 10, 2015 at 1:05 am
This is another racist movie where fat ugly Seth Rogen plays an explicitly Jewish character, while good-looking Jewish actors (Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Lizzy Caplan, this time) play non-Jews. As a matter of fact, despite being the son of two Jewish parents, Gordon-Levitt has never explicitly played his own ethnicity once in his entire 30 years of acting. Is there a problem, Joey?
This is the same racist trick Rogen pulls every time. He always casts himself as an explicit Jewish character opposite non-Jewish characters played by good-looking Jews (Paul Rudd, James Franco, Dave Franco, Zac Efron, Halston Sage, etc.).
And this new film is from the same studio, S.S.ony, that released last year’s Fury, about fighting Nazis during WWII. Fury starred no less than four Jews (Logan Lerman, Jon Bernthal, Jason Isaacs, and Shia LaBeouf), yet none of the characters were Jewish and Jews and the Holocaust were never mentioned. Gee, maybe they should have cast Seth Rogen as a “funny” Jewish soldier who died early on in the film.
Actors of fully Jewish background: Logan Lerman, Natalie Portman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Mila Kunis, Bar Refaeli, James Wolk, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Julian Morris, Adam Brody, Esti Ginzburg, Kat Dennings, Gabriel Macht, Erin Heatherton, Odeya Rush, Anton Yelchin, Paul Rudd, Scott Mechlowicz, Lisa Kudrow, Lizzy Caplan, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Gal Gadot, Debra Messing, Robert Kazinsky, Melanie Laurent, Shiri Appleby, Justin Bartha, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Margarita Levieva, Elizabeth Berkley, Halston Sage, Seth Gabel, Corey Stoll, Mia Kirshner, Alden Ehrenreich, Eric Balfour, Jason Isaacs, Jon Bernthal, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy.
Andrew Garfield and Aaron Taylor-Johnson are Jewish, too (though I don’t know if both of their parents are).
Actors with Jewish mothers and non-Jewish fathers: Jake Gyllenhaal, Dave Franco, James Franco, Scarlett Johansson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Daniel Radcliffe, Alison Brie, Eva Green, Joaquin Phoenix, River Phoenix, Emmy Rossum, Rashida Jones, Jennifer Connelly, Sofia Black D’Elia, Nora Arnezeder, Goldie Hawn, Ginnifer Goodwin, Amanda Peet, Eric Dane, Jeremy Jordan, Joel Kinnaman, Ben Barnes, Patricia Arquette, Kyra Sedgwick, Dave Annable, Ryan Potter.
Actors with Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers, who themselves were either raised as Jews and/or identify as Jews: Ezra Miller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Alexa Davalos, Nat Wolff, Nicola Peltz, James Maslow, Josh Bowman, Winona Ryder, Michael Douglas, Ben Foster, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nikki Reed, Zac Efron, Jonathan Keltz, Paul Newman.
Oh, and Ansel Elgort’s father is Jewish, though I don’t know how Ansel was raised. Robert Downey, Jr. and Sean Penn were also born to Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers. Armie Hammer and Chris Pine are part Jewish.
Actors with one Jewish-born parent and one parent who converted to Judaism: Dianna Agron, Sara Paxton (whose father converted, not her mother), Alicia Silverstone, Jamie-Lynn Sigler.