Force Fed Films: A Night at the Roxbury (1998)

This week Puneet handed me a movie that may have one of the best soundtracks of all time. Best at what? I'm not sure, but best at something. A Night at the Roxbury is another one of those movies made off of popular SNL comedy sketches that has spawned many an animated gif. Filled with one-liners and based on sketches that had no plot or story whatsoever, this could be a difficult movie to pin down, but I'll do my best after the jump!


Steve and Doug Butami are two moronic brothers who live for the clubs. Sure they have jobs working at their Dad's fake plant store (the store isn't fake, the plants are), but all they think about is the next night they can go back out to the clubs. They're good boys, but they barely have a single brain between them. So it's no wonder when pure dumb luck (could they have any other kind?) lands them a ticket into the hottest club in town, The Roxbury. What follows is the possibly the best night of their lives, but this is only the beginning!

A Night at the Roxbury is the kind of movie I've come to love because they have a huge cast of B-list actors. Tons of people that you recognize from all over, but you don't really know who they are. Will Farrell has since risen above those ranks and has tons of his own movies now, but it's the smaller supporting roles that are filled with those slightly familiar faces. Michael Clarke Duncan, Dan Hedaya, Chazz Palminteri, Meredith Scott Lynn, and Jennifer Coolidge are just a few of the many stars to make appearances in the film, and they're all great for their exact roles. The biggest surprise for me personally was to see Eva Mendes pop in for a short cameo right at the end, for the sole purpose of having the camera zoom in on her breasts as Steve Butami checks her out during his own wedding! I love Eva Mendes.

Scott and Doug Butami rippin it up at the club!

As for actual acting in the film, there isn't much, but it does exactly what is asked of it. That is give you these two idiot brothers that Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan play, which is both its blessing and its curse. They're completely brainless for the whole movie, but they work really well together because as one has a moment of ineptitude, that's the exact moment the other one is hitting his peak of average intelligence, thus saving the other. It's this absurd back and forth that makes the characters work... most of the time. Sadly there are times when they're just really annoying, and I got this mostly from Chris Kattan's character Doug. How much they bounce back and forth from funny to annoying will vary from viewer to viewer, but luckily for me the scales tipped towards the funny side a little bit more.

Spoofs on classic romantic comedies abound, and it's great!

I was actually kind of surprised at how much story was forced into the movie. Besides their constant endeavors to get into clubs and the nightclub business in general, there's also a sub plot of a neighbour's daughter who is inexplicably in love with Scott (Will Farrell). The fact that this woman, crazy in her own rights, is attracted to this character who kinda likes her, but then immediately blows her off because his brother doesn't like her is pretty funny. This of course leads to a split between the bothers, and the whole movie actually becomes a chick-flick of the two brothers getting back together. I must admit that I found the role reversal of the usual formula pretty funny.

If I were to make a checklist in which I had to rate different aspects of the movie as simply good or bad, I'd end up with a lot on the 'bad' side of the list. But somehow this is one of those movies where the whole is greater than its parts. Very few comedies can make me laugh outside of group situations with friends, but some of the cheesy jokes that kept hitting me at a mile a minute broke me and got a few laughs. And I don't mean just a smirk, the full-on out-loud variety. Also, this definitely seems like one of those movies that only gets better on repeated viewings and watching it with friends due to the massive amount of quotable one-liners and comedy bits. I say check it out, if only for the Haddaway song, because really, when you get right down to it, what is love?