Rough Night
Rough Night is a 2017 American black comedy film directed by Lucia Aniello and written by Aniello and Paul W. Downs. It stars Scarlett Johansson, Zoë Kravitz, Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, Ilana Glazer, Paul Downs, Ty Burrell, and Demi Moore, and follows a bachelorette party that goes wrong after a male stripper dies.
The film was released in the United States on June 16, 2017, by Sony Pictures Releasing to goes through Columbia Pictures, received mixed reviews and grossed $47 million worldwide against a production budget of about $26 million.
Plot
In 2006, four friends, Jess, Alice, Frankie and Blair, bond during their first year of college. A decade later they reunite as Jess is about to marry Peter. Alice decides that the four should spend the weekend in Miami partying. They are also joined by Pippa, Jess's friend from her semester in Australia. The friends get high and party at a club and then decide to hire a male stripper. When the stripper arrives at the door, he makes Jess uncomfortable with his rough talk. Alice decides to take a turn and jumps on him, causing them to both fall and the stripper to hit his head on the edge of the fireplace, killing him. Before they decide what to do, Jess takes a call from Peter and mentions that her friends hired a stripper and she is confused. Peter takes this to mean that Jess is leaving him and decides to race down to Miami to convince Jess to take him back.The friends purchase a burner phone and call Blair's uncle, who is a lawyer. After telling them they moved the body, he tells them they could face up to fifteen years in prison unless no body is found. The friends decide to dispose of the body by throwing it into the ocean. After doing so, they realize that their neighbors' security camera caught them on tape and send Blair to seduce them to get the footage only to have her discover the cameras don't work after she has slept with them. By this point, the body has washed up on the shore and they must come up with a new plan to dispose of it.
A police officer knocks on their door and Frankie knocks him out after he gropes her, only for the friends to realize that he was the actual stripper they had ordered, leaving them to wonder who they killed. They use the stripper's car to try to dispose of the body again only to return home defeated after a car accident. Then when Alice finds out Jess invited Frankie and Blair to a bridal shower over her, Jess verbally berates her for her obsessive clinginess and storms off to prepare for the consequences.
At this point, two police officers arrive and tell the women they are not in trouble as the man they killed was a violent criminal who had been on the run from the police. As they interrogate the women Pippa realizes that the "police" are actually the accomplices of the man they killed. Realizing that they are caught, the men tie up the women and the now-awakened stripper and threaten to shoot them. Jess meanwhile has missed most of the drama due to being upstairs taking a shower in preparation for her mugshot. Realizing what has happened, she manages to subdue one of the captors using hairspray and handcuffs and fights off the other one as he prepares to kill Blair. After Alice shoots the second captor, the first one reappears having freed himself from the toy handcuffs only to be run over when Peter, high on the drugs he took to keep him awake on his roadtrip to Miami, crashes into the front of the house and kills him.
Jess reaffirms that she wants to marry Peter and the two marry that weekend at a foam party with their friends in attendance. Frankie and Blair decide to reunite as a couple and Alice hooks up with Scotty, the police officer stripper that she met at Jess's bachelorette party.
In a mid-credits scene, Pippa sings a song with lyrics that allude to the evening.
In a post-credits scene Alice finds the thief's stolen diamonds.
Cast
- Scarlett Johansson as Jessica "Jess" Thayer
- Kate McKinnon as Pippa/Kiwi
- Jillian Bell as Alice
- Ilana Glazer as Frankie
- Zoë Kravitz as Blair
- Paul W. Downs as Peter
- Demi Moore as Lea
- Ty Burrell as Pietro
- Ryan Cooper as Jay, the fake stripper
- Colton Haynes as Scotty McBody, the real stripper
- Dean Winters as Detective Frazier
- Enrique Murciano as Detective Ruiz
- Bo Burnham as Tobey
- Eric Andre as Jake
- Hasan Minhaj as Joe
- Patrick Carlyle as Patrick
- Karan Soni as Raviv
- Peter Francis James as Uncle Jack
- Bob the Drag Queen as himself
Production
In December 2015, Scarlett Johansson joined the film to play the lead role. In April 2016, Zoë Kravitz joined the film, with the rest of the main cast announced the next month. Principal photography began in August 2016 in Saddle Rock, New York. In late September 2016, filming was taking place in Mount Vernon, New York.
The film was originally titled Rock That Body but was renamed to Rough Night, possibly due to copyright issues.
Dominic Lewis composed the film's musical score.
Release
Rough Night was scheduled to be released on June 23, 2017. It was then moved up a week to June 16. The studio spent about $35 million on promotion and advertisements.Reception
Box office
Rough Night grossed $22.1 million in the United States and Canada and $25.2 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $47.3 million, against a production budget of $20 million.In North America, the film was released alongside All Eyez on Me, 47 Meters Down and Cars 3, and was initially projected to gross $10–14 million from 3,162 theaters in its opening weekend. However, after making just $3.4 million on its first day, weekend projections were readjusted to $9 million. It ended up debuting to $8 million, finishing 7th at the box office. In its second weekend the film grossed $4.7 million, finishing 8th at the box office.
Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 44% based on 166 reviews, with an average rating of 5.25/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Rough Nights gifted stars are certainly good for some laughs, but their talents aren't properly utilized in a scattered comedy that suffers from too many missed opportunities." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 51 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it a 66% overall positive score.Critics have pointed out strong similarities between Rough Night and the 1998 Peter Berg black comedy Very Bad Things.