ROUGH NIGHT

Quite a few years ago, there were a few dark comedies about men at a bachelor party dealing with the death of the stripper they hired.  I suppose it's gender equality that the formula is being reversed in Rough Night, where the women have to deal with this problem.

About a decade ago, Jess (Scarlett Johansson), Alice (Jillian Bell), Blair (Zoe Kravitz), and Frankie (Ilana Glazer) were sorority sisters and best friends in college.  In the present, Jess is dragged away from her political campaign and fiancee Peter (Paul W. Downs) for a bachelor party at a glass-walled house in Miami Beach, thrown by the other three friends -- and Pippa (Kate McKinnon), Jess' friend from Australia whos presence causes tremendous jealousy from Alice, who sees herself as Jess' best friend.

The women party it up -- drinking, clubbing, even doing coke -- and they hire a male stripper for Jess.  He gets a bit rough with Jess, and when Alice tries to jump him she accidentally kills him.  Worse, they look very guilty -- they have cocaine, they moved the body to a sex swing to keep it from being seen -- so they decide to get rid of the body.  This involves everything from driving the body through town in a tiny car to dealing with the creepy swingers (Demi Moore, Ty Burrell) next door.  Meanwhile, Peter is freaking out because he can't get in touch with Jess, so he winds up in his own misadventures when driving down to win her back.  And, of course, another male stripper turns up, and folks come looking for the dead stripper...

Rough Night is a pretty basic crude comedy.  There's lot of raunchy humor, from the near-continual profanity, to visual jokes (like the corpse being "disguised" by wearing sunglasses with a penis nose).  The cast is good, with Jillian Bell standing out as the seemingly wholesome teacher who's hornier and raunchier than all the other women.  Unfortunately, this movie follows some pretty predictable patterns: The women all blowing up at each other, a transition to almost being an action movie, and a schmaltzy "best friends forever" ending.  But there are a lot of laughs for most of the movie, making Rough Night good (if somewhat standard) entertainment.

Overall grade: B
Reviewed by James Lynch