THE NIGHT BEFORE
**1/2 (out of four)
DIRECTED BY Jonathan Levine
STARS Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen
For over a dozen years, best buds Ethan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Isaac (Seth Rogen) and Chris (Anthony Mackie) have spent Christmas Eve in frantic search of the legendary Nutcracka Ball, a wild party whose location is even more guarded than that of the masked orgy in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. Finally obtaining (actually, stealing) three tickets to the exclusive bash, the three putz around NYC waiting for the magic hour — during that time, Ethan gets beaten up by a pair of street Santas, Isaac trips hard on shrooms, coke and other drugs, and Chris gets ripped off by a self-professed Grinch (Ilana Glazer).
The Night Before is the sort of BFF (Bro Friends Forever) flick that now invades our multiplexes with clockwork regularity, all cut from a similar template: an amusing premise, appealing actors, a handful of large laughs in the early going (“I haven’t done cocaine in 11 years!” “No one has, I don’t think.”), some tedious soul-searching moments in the late innings, and a couple of cameos from big stars playing themselves (the ones here are wholly underwhelming). What provides the picture with most of its unexpected spark is the deft turn by Michael Shannon, hilarious as a rambling pot dealer who operates out of his car. Even his radical character gets neutered by some dopey plotting toward the end, but until then, he’s the performer who most earns his wings.
Related Stories
Neighbors 2: Mediocrity rising
This article appears in Nov 18-24, 2015.
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.