By Robert Scucci
| Published
If you head on over to Rotten Tomatoes, you’ll find that a healthy amount of SNL-based movies barely break past the 50% mark on the critical front. A Night at the Roxbury, which is currently considered to be the second-worst movie of the bunch with its abysmal 11 percent critical score (just 11 percent higher than the ill-fated It’s Pat), may suffer from being nothing more than a prolonged skit with unnecessary backstory to push the premise into feature-film territory, but it’s still a fun, light-hearted, film that fans of Will Ferrell and Kris Kattan will hold near and dear to their hearts.
To put it simply, films like A Night at the Roxbury aren’t meant to be taken seriously, or even watched critically for that matter. But if you go into the viewing experience knowing that, you’ll have as good a time as Steve (Will Ferrell) and Doug Butabi (Chris Kattan) when they get a hold of a couple cans of Fluffy Whip and get absolutely juiced up before a night on the town.
Like The SNL Skit, But Somehow Dumber
If you grew up guffawing at even one of the “Roxbury Guys” skits from SNL, then you pretty much know everything you need to know going into A Night at the Roxbury because their backstories are established in the movie without any need for prior context or lore. Against a blistering misical backdrop of Haddaway’s certified club banger, “What is Love,” the Roxbury Guys, now developed into more complex yet still somehow one-dimensional characters – Steve and Doug Butabi – are two emotionally stunted manchildren who only care about the nightlife.
Working by day at an artificial plant store under their father Kamehl’s (Dan Hedaya) supervision, Steve and Doug have one goal in mind, and that’s to finally gain entry to the elusive and exclusive Roxbury. Though they’ve got the moves and their signature blue and red suits, they get turned away at the door by the bouncer on a nightly basis because they just don’t have that X factor that allows them to breach the club’s front doors.
The Conflict
A Night at the Roxbury, in its attempt to establish a source of conflict, introduces Emily Sanderson (Molly Shannon), the daughter of Fred (Dwayne Hickman) and Mabel (Maree Cheatham) Sanderson, the wealthy business owners who operate next to Khamel’s shop. In Khamel’s ideal world, Steve and Emily will become an item, get married, and they can combine their resources, leading to extraordinary amounts of wealth.
Steve and Doug, on the other hand, fantasize about one day opening up their own nightclub, which causes a rift in the family dynamic.
As luck may have it, the boys finally have a night at the Roxbury that they’ll never forget after Richard Greico’s Ferrari crashes into their father’s delivery van while they’re trying to get into the club, and the 21 Jump Street star gets them on the guest list as a sign of goodwill.
Steve and Doug, who have never been with women in their lives, catch the attention of Vivica (Gigi Rice) and Cambi (Elisa Donovan), who only give them the time of day because they think they’re rich. Meanwhile, Steve and Doug also find themselves in the good graces of Mr. Benny Zadir, the owner of the Roxbury, the man who, in their minds, needs to know about their hot new club idea: a place where the outside looks like a club, and the inside looks like the street.
Everything seems to be shaping up for Steve and Doug in A Night at the Roxbury before they repeatedly rub Dooey (Colin Quinn), Mr. Zadir’s bodyguard, the wrong way, resulting in his efforts to sabotage their life-long dream of owning the hottest nightclub in town.
The Beats Don’t Matter
If you go into watching A Night at the Roxbury expecting some brilliant, well-thought-out coming-of-age story about two idiots with zero business acumen or game with the ladies to live out their wildest fantasies, you’ll be gravely disappointed. While the above beats by themselves could make for a pretty compelling story about how two brothers let their ambition get in the way of their unbreakable friendship, they’re simply used as vehicles for slapstick humor as the Roxbury Guys bumble through their lives without a clue in the world as to how much effort, money, and networking goes into pulling off what they set out to do.
In fact, most expository scenes seem so out of place that you may find yourself tuning out whenever Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan aren’t on screen. Those moments when the two stars of A Night at the Roxbury are in their element, however, play out like a prolonged version of the iconic Saturday Night Live skits, and your mileage may vary depending on whether that’s what you’re seeking out in the first place.
A Night at the Roxbury is an objectively terrible movie. But at the end of the day, it’s good dumb fun to throw on in the background so you can hear that story about Emilio Estevez tipping his hat about a dozen times if you’re willing to fire up this abomination on Paramount+.
Leave a Reply