Rough Night

So what happens when your Palm Springs Weekend turns into River’s Edge? It would seem that director Lucia Aniello takes a raunchy dick-centric bachelorette party and uses it for jabs at conservative adult men since things go from awkward to desperately unfunny in this redundant mess of a movie. Jess (Scarlett Johansson) was a political science major back in college when her girlfriends Frankie, Alice and Blair were party girls who’ve now grown up to be activists, divorcees and stuck in the past and want to throw her a Miami weekend party before her marriage to Peter. Only problem is Jess is running for State Senate against an “Anthony Wiener” type (she complains her opponent wants to cut funding to ALL the programs that help people – meaning he’s Hollywood’s idea of a Republican! – yet he’s dick texting a la Wiener, who is a Democrat!) and she really doesn’t need any scandals to derail her campaign. In this screwed up dimension, it’s the men who attend a wine tasting as their BACHELOR party and the women who hire strippers!! It’s Peter who panics that his betrothed has gotten cold feet and does a red-eye ride to Miami to forgive her for indiscretions. The best scene in the entire picture comes in the third act when Jess is dressing down her girlfriends for their faults and comes to Pippa (Kate McKinnon), her Australian outsider friend, and says, “You’ve been fine!” which is exactly the perfect critical assessment of their overall performances.

[R]