Rough Night

Rough Night (released in some countries as Girls' Night Out)[4] is a 2017 American black comedy film directed by Lucia Aniello (in her feature debut) and written by Aniello and Paul W. Downs. It stars Scarlett Johansson, Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, Ilana Glazer and Zoë Kravitz in lead roles, as well as Paul Downs, Ty Burrell and Demi Moore in supporting roles. The story follows a bachelorette party that goes wrong after a male stripper dies.

Rough Night
Theatrical release poster
Directed byLucia Aniello
Written by
Produced by
Starring
CinematographySean Porter
Edited byCraig Alpert
Music byDominic Lewis
Production
companies
Distributed bySony Pictures Releasing
Release dates
  • June 12, 2017 (2017-06-12) (New York City)
  • June 16, 2017 (2017-06-16) (United States)
Running time
101 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$20–26 million[2][3]
Box office$47.3 million[2]

The film was released in the United States on June 16, 2017, by Sony Pictures Releasing 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. Alice, who considers herself to be Jess's best friend, is immediately jealous of Pippa.

The friends get high on cocaine and party at a club and then decide to hire a male stripper. At the vacation house, 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 die after hitting his head on the fireplace. 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 thinks that she is leaving him and becomes distraught. His friends tell him that he should drive down to Miami to win her back.

The friends purchase a burner phone to call Blair's lawyer uncle. After telling them they moved the body, he tells them they could face up to fifteen years in prison unless no body is found. They decide to dispose of the body, throwing it into the ocean.

After doing so, they think the neighbors' security camera caught them on tape, and send Blair to seduce them for the footage, only to discover the cameras don't work after she has slept with them. By this point, the body has washed up back on the shore and they must come up with a new plan to dispose of it.

A uniformed police officer knocks on their door and Frankie knocks him out after he gropes her, only for them to realize he was the stripper they had hired, leaving them to wonder who was killed. They try to dispose of the body again, with the stripper's car, only to return defeated after a car accident. Then when Alice finds out Jess invited Frankie and Blair to a bridal shower over her, Jess berates her for her obsessive clinginess and storms off to prepare for the consequences.

At this point, two plainclothes 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 accomplices of the man killed. Realizing 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 subdues 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 reappears, having removed the toy handcuffs, only to be run over by Peter, high on the drugs he took to keep him awake on his roadtrip to Miami.

Jess reaffirms that she wants to marry Peter and they do it that weekend at a foam party with their friends. Frankie and Blair reunite as a couple and Alice hooks up with Scotty, the police officer stripper from the bachelorette party.

In a mid-credits scene, Pippa sings lyrics that allude to the evening, and after the credits Alice finds the thief's stolen diamonds that had been stashed in a box of naughty pasta from the bachelorette party.

Cast

Production

On the strength of Aniello's success with Broad City, the film was the subject of an intense bidding war, of which Sony Pictures Entertainment was announced as the winner in June 2015.[5][6] The script was among the 2015 Black List of unproduced scripts.[7] Aniello has referred to the movie as "a comedic version of The Big Chill".[5]

In December 2015, Scarlett Johansson joined the film to play the lead role.[8] In April 2016, Zoë Kravitz joined the film,[9] with the rest of the main cast announced the next month.[10] 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 spent $26 million in New York State and received $6 million in tax rebates.[3]

The film was originally titled Rock That Body but was renamed to Rough Night, possibly due to copyright issues as "Rock Your Body" had already been used as a song title by Justin Timberlake.[11]

Music

Dominic Lewis composed the film's musical score.[12]

Release

Theatrical

Rough Night was scheduled to be released on June 23, 2017.[13] It was then moved up a week to June 16.[14]

Marketing

The studio spent about $35 million on promotion and advertisements.[15]

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.[2]

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.[16] After making just $3.4 million on its first day (including $700,000 from Thursday night previews ), weekend projections were revised to $9 million. It ended up debuting to $8 million, finishing 7th at the box office.[15] In its second weekend the film grossed $4.7 million (a drop of just over 41%), finishing 8th at the box office.[17]

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 45% based on 173 reviews, with an average rating of 5.20/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Rough Night's 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."[18] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 51 out of 100, based on reviews from 40 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[19] 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.[15]

Owen Gleiberman of Variety wrote: "Rough Night, a bachelorette-party-from-hell thriller comedy that's got some push and some laughs, despite its essentially formulaic nature, is a perfect example of why Hollywood needs (many) more women filmmakers."[20]

The cast received positive notices, even though the film as a whole did not. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote "The women in Rough Night are terrific company. They never wear out their welcome. You can't say the same for the movie."[21] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times said "It's all blithely formulaic and would be more irritating if the performers — who include Zoë Kravitz and Illana Glazer — weren't generally so appealing."[22] David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "All the talented women here are stuck playing types rather than characters, in a strained frolic in which both the verbal humor and the physical gags too often fall flat."[23]

Critics have pointed out strong similarities between Rough Night and the 1998 Peter Berg black comedy Very Bad Things.[20][21][24][25][26]

Adaptation

The film was later adapted in India in Telugu language as Anukunnadi Okkati Ayyandhi Okati (transl. Planned for one, happened the other) which released on 6 March 2020 through Amazon Prime Video.

References
  1. "Rough Night". AMC Theatres. Retrieved 29 May 2017.
  2. "Rough Night (2017)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 13 September 2017.
  3. "2017 Feature Film Study" (PDF). FilmL.A. Feature Film Study: 24. August 2018. Retrieved 9 August 2018.
  4. "Rough Night (#11 of 17): Extra Large Movie Poster Image". IMP Awards. Retrieved 5 November 2017.
  5. Keegan, Rebecca (7 June 2017). "The Audacity of Rough Night, the First R-rated Studio Comedy Directed by a Woman in Nearly 20 Years". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 26 November 2017.
  6. Fleming, Mike Jr. (22 June 2015). "Sony Wins R-Rated Spec Comedy Auction With 'Broad City' & '21 Jump Street' Spinoff Scribes Aniello & Downs". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved 16 December 2015.
  7. Hipes, Patrick (14 December 2015). "Black List 2015 Scripts Announced With 'Bubbles' King Of The Jungle - Full List". Deadline.com. Retrieved 16 December 2015.
  8. Sneider, Jeff (15 December 2015). "Scarlett Johansson to Star in Sony's Raunchy Comedy 'Move That Body' (Exclusive)". TheWrap. Retrieved 16 December 2015.
  9. Kroll, Justin (28 April 2016). "Zoe Kravitz in Talks to Star With Scarlett Johansson in 'Rock That Body' (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Retrieved 4 May 2016.
  10. Kit, Borys (2 May 2016). "Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell and Ilana Glazer Join Scarlett Johansson's R-Rated Comedy". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 4 May 2016.
  11. Emma Stefansky (7 March 2017). "First Look at Scarlett Johansson's Comedy 'Rough Night'". ScreenCrush. Retrieved 2 December 2017.
  12. "Dominic Lewis to Score 'Rock That Body'". Film Music Reporter. 20 December 2016. Retrieved 20 December 2016.
  13. D'Alessandro, Anthony (16 June 2016). "Scarlett Johansson Comedy 'Rock That Body' Finds A Groove Next June". Deadline.com. Retrieved 26 August 2016.
  14. D'Alessandro, Anthony (1 December 2016). "Scarlett Johansson Comedy 'Rock That Body' Moves Up A Week". Deadline.com. Retrieved 1 December 2016.
  15. Anthony D'Alessandro (18 June 2017). "Cars 3' $53M+ Is Third Best Debut For Pixar Series; 'Wonder Woman' Still Wows With $40M+; 'All Eyez On Me' Solid". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved 18 January 2021.
  16. "Pixar's 'Cars 3' should unseat 'Wonder Woman' at the box office". Los Angeles Times. 13 June 2017.
  17. Anthony D'Alessandro (25 June 2017). "Why 'Transformers' Is Screaming For Reboot After $69M Start; 'Wonder Woman' & 'Cars 3' Fight Over 2nd Place". Deadline Hollywood.
  18. "Rough Night (2017)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved 1 January 2021.
  19. "Rough Night Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 24 January 2021.
  20. Gleiberman, Owen (14 June 2017). "Film Review: 'Rough Night'". Variety. Retrieved 1 January 2021. It's "Very Bad Things" with the sexes reversed, but also with a harmless synthetic dollop of the "Hangover" films, a replay of the best-friend-of-the-bride jealousy drama of "Bridesmaids," plus a touch of "Weekend at Bernie's."
  21. Travers, Peter (15 June 2017). "'Rough Night' Review: Female 'Hangover' Never Finds Its Comedic Mojo". Rolling Stone. Is it Bridesmaids mixed with the classic corpse comedy Weekend at Bernie's? Or, if your taste runs to indies, is it Very Bad Things spiced with Bachelorette?
  22. Dargis, Manohla (15 June 2017). "Review: In 'Rough Night,' It's Women Behaving Badly (Yawn) (Published 2017)". The New York Times.
  23. "'Rough Night': Film Review". The Hollywood Reporter. 14 June 2017.
  24. Simran Hans (27 August 2017). "Rough Night review – faux-feminist gags fall flat". The Guardian. Guardian News & Media Limited. Retrieved 6 March 2020.
  25. Kassendorf, Julius (25 September 2017). "Adventures in Remakes: ROUGH NIGHT and VERY BAD THINGS". The Solute. Retrieved 6 January 2021.
  26. "Revisiting 'Very Bad Things,' the 'Rough Night' of 1998". Vulture. Vox Media Network. 15 June 2017. Retrieved 3 January 2020.

Further reading
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