It’s a little bit The Hangover, a little bit Weekend at Bernie’s and more than a little bit Very Bad Things – Rough Night is a different kind of chick flick.
The new film brings together an ensemble of fresh faces in comedy – and Scarlett Johansson and Zoe Kravitz – for a crude, blackly comic misadventure.
This is far from your average chick flick. There’s no meet-cute, no relationship montage or inevitable – if fleeting – heartbreak.
Rough Night follows five friends (Johansson, Kravitz, Jillian Bell, Kate McKinnon and Ilana Glazer) on a bachelorette party weekend in Miami.
Johansson’s senator-to-be Jess is also the bride-to-be and Bell’s Alice has pulled out all the stops to give her a weekend to remember.
At their first bar stop Glazer’s Frankie scores some cocaine and the group proceed to get high – never a good start.
Kravitz’s Blair suggests the group get a stripper and they all return to the house one of Johansson’s clients has loaned them.
Things go terribly awry once the stripper arrives. No secret to anyone who has seen the trailers or watched Very Bad Things, the stripper is accidentally killed.
The rest of the film follows the group’s attempts to cover up the death and dispose of the body, with various obstacles preventing them from achieving their goal.
The five actresses have great chemistry and all have their moments to shine.
Bell draws most of the laughs as the off-kilter and slightly possessive Alice, a character not so different from those she played in 22 Jump Street, Fist Fight and Office Christmas Party.
However many Aussies will be laughing for all the wrong reasons at McKinnon.
For some unknown reason the Saturday Night Live funnywoman was cast as an Australian in the movie and delivers a truly atrocious accent.
‘Pizza’ becomes ‘pizz-er’ and ‘no’s are delivered as though they are two-syllable words – not to mention the gag about Vegemite.
Demi Moore and Modern Family’s Ty Burrell make a hilarious cameo as next-door neighbours.
While the film is not as good as any of the three movies it seems to be inspired by, it provides plenty of laughs and even more awkward moments.