That's the kind of versatility I've long admired in Scarlett Johansson, it's the kind of elasticity in terms of what movies she'll appear in that allows her to be both a memorable Marvel superhero and provide one of the all-time great voice over performances as an A.I. unit named Samantha in a Spike Jonze masterpiece. Rough Night doesn't scale the quality heights of those parts of Johansson's career for sure, but it's still a solid first foray into the world of comedy for Scarlett Johansson, one with plenty of laughs and a strong cast that help compensate for a screenplay that's too scattershot in terms of structure.
Rough Night (which previously carried the infinitely better title Rock That Body) concerns prospective Senator Jess (Scarlett Johansson) meeting up with four of her college pals for her Bachelorette weekend. Those friends include exuberant teacher Alice (Jillian Bell), the super rich Blair (Zoe Kravitz), socially conscious activist Frankie (Illana Glazer) and the warm-hearted Australian Pippa (Kate McKinnon). The group is having quite the memorable night when Frankie orders up a male stripper for Jess, whom Alice inadvertently kills. As one might imagine, the act of accidentally killing a person sends the five of them into distress as they try to figure out to handle the prospect of dealing with a dead body.
Dark comedies tend to be something mainstream American comedies normally try to avoid, but Rough Night certainly makes no attempt to mask the darker implications of its plotline. The larger consequences of the manslaughter that has transpired weigh heavy on the individual characters and provide some notable laughs in juxtaposing their own more mundane individual lives compared to them coming to terms with the hideous crime they've all become culpable in. Trying to dispose of a dead body or coping with their predicament by stress eating some pizza are just a few of the ways Rough Night gains some fine humor out of this darker situation its plot revolves around.
It's good the laughs come at a steady clip in Rough Night because those assorted gags help mitigate the fact that the movie does overall feel too scattered as a story. That's primarily due to an extended subplot with Jess's boyfriend Peter (Paul W. Downs) mistakenly thinking his relationship with his fiancee is fractured and that he must hurry down to Florida (where her Bachelorette party is occurring) and fix their issues. There's some funny stuff in his extended road trip, but during any of the multiple times we cut back to his shenaningans, they feel like a distraction from the more humorous and entertaining antics going on with Jess and her friends trying to figure out how to properly handle the deceased stripper.
Of course, even the time spent with these five leads provide some dud jokes, but for the most part, Jess and her group of friends deliver some fine laughs which usually come from the actors playing these five leads and the strong chemistry they share. Scarlett Johansson works wonderfully as a straight woman to some of the craziness, Zoe Kravitz and Illana Glazer make their more thinly-written caricatures characters work as enjoyable creations, Jillian Bell proves again she's a rare comedic actor who can make abrasive humorous and not repetitive and then there's Kate McKinnon, who it seems can make me laugh heartily just by making a facial expression.
McKinnon enters the movie lugging giant suitcases with a giant smile and an even larger Australian accent on her tongue. She's an over-the-top piece of work who works thanks to a steady supply of funny lines and Kate McKinnons thoroughly committed and earnest performance. These five bounce off each other quite well and even when their attempts to dispose of the dead body feel too repetitive, you can usually count on someone in the group to deliver a chuckle-worthy piece of dialogue. Under the well-handled direction of Lucia Aniello (who helps make Rough Night look much more like an actual movie than a large swatch of recent American comedies), the actors headlining Rough Night help get some notable laughs and charm out of a project that had me laughing quite a bit even as it too often feels scattered in its story structure.
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