The Night Before

Twas’ the night before Christmas and all through the city, not a creature was stirring…except for three friends getting into some shit.

The Night Before follows three best buddies who have been getting together to celebrate Christmas for the past decade or so in order to keep up with a tradition they started when Ethan (Joseph Gordon Levitt) lost his family. This year, however, is different; Isaac (Seth Rogen) is having a baby and Chris (Anthony Mackie) is getting sport famous, and both are quite honestly getting bored of the entire ordeal. But in a twist of fate, Ethan finds three tickets to their Holy Grail, an exclusive and elusive holiday party called the Nutcracker Ball that they have been trying to attend for years with no luck. Now, with tickets in hand, a few drugs mixed in, and a handful of unresolved personal issues bubbling at the surface, Ethan, Chris and Isaac hit the town for one last Christmas hurrah.

The Night Before is a great adult oriented holiday film that doubles as a comedy while at the same time kicking you in the feels. It balances each character’s story in a funny yet believable way, giving them genuine character arcs that you don’t normally see in a comedy, which right off the bat elevates this film to a level I wasn’t expecting it to go.

To start off, the casting in this film is perfect. I can’t think of any better choices than what is presented here. While certainly having acted in comedies before, but very rarely classified as being “comedic actors”, the casting of Mackie and Levitt makes things interesting in a way that only betters the film. They can handle the emotional weight and drama that these characters are set up with while hitting those comedic timings and hilarious dialogue with ease. But if I’m being honest, the real reason they work so well is because they are paired perfectly by their third, decidedly more Jewish counterpart, in Rogen’s Isaac.

As part of probably one of the most endearing onscreen marriages I’ve ever seen (no joke), Rogen is given a small grab bag of drugs by his wife, Betsy (Jillian Bell), in order to make his last night with Chris and Ethan one worth remembering…or potentially not worth remembering once he digs into all of the different illegal substances at his disposal. What follows is literally one of the most fun and funny performances I’ve ever seen by Rogen, and that’s saying a lot. His sheer drug fueled lunacy is a joy to watch and balances well with Mackie’s more action-y scenes and Levitt’s more serious ones. It’s a balance that is struck so seamlessly so that when all three actors are apart, they effectively hold up their ends of the story with no problem, thus leading to some truly great scenes when they’re all together. Throw in some awesome secondary characters (especially Michael Shannon as the trios’ drug dealer), and a couple cameos that steal their respective scenes, and now we know how Christmas miracles are made.

Speaking of Christmas miracles, what a way to set this story up not only to pay homage to other holiday classics, but to also give the story a sort of magical fairytale, Christmas Carol-ish type of vibe. For example, Isaac is worried about having a baby, but he hides the fact that he is nowhere near ready for parenthood from his wife in order to continue to be her “Dwayne Johnson” (get it?) and it’s starting to weigh on him. He’s scared of being a father, of screwing up his kid, of doing all the wrong things. In short: he’s scared of the future. Chris on the other hand, is obsessed with his newfound fame, obsessed with always trying to impress people that he should give no time of day to, obsessed with always trying to be someone that he isn’t, in other words, he’s obsessed with the present. Lastly is Ethan. He’s always looking backward to either his family’s deaths, to the girl he let walk away or to the Christmas tradition that is slowly falling away from him. The past is his burden to bear and if you haven’t realized where the filmmakers are going with the whole Christmas Carol thing then I don’t know what to tell you.

This direction is a brilliant way to inject some whimsical holiday spirit into the film and gives our leads some clear problems to work through during the film’s breezy runtime. The dead serious and highly emotional scenes that show the relationship between these three as they combat their own shortcomings and work towards becoming better friends and better people throughout the night, are well handled and progress realistically. There’s one scene in particular that at first had me, along with everyone in the theater, start off laughing only to see that as the scene went on, how real it became and how well it showcased just how much a little humanity could do for a person down on their luck. It’s small moments like these that really sell this movie as not only a holiday film, but as a complete movie package.

Other than that, there’s not much to complain about save for a few things that felt a bit off compared to the rest of the movie. For one, being a holiday film, The Night Before’s main message follows that of every other holiday flick known to man: life is about family, friends, personal sacrifice and growth, and at times, hits this theme a little too on the nose. The filmmakers did a good job of subtly adding some great holiday clichés, but a few forced scenes made some clichés a bit more obvious than most. The middle of the film did drag a bit and I wish there was a bit more reason as to why Ethan happened upon the Nutcracker Ball tickets (tying in that plot point with Michael Shannon’s end of the movie reveal would have been nice), but all in all, this movie was firing on all cylinders.

With some spot on casting, a whole bunch of hysterical and emotionally resonant scenes, along with a great sense of the holiday spirit, The Night Before has now earned itself a place in my holiday movie lineup. I suggest doing the same.