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Rating: 3.5 stars

All movies seen on 09/03/2007

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A Night at the Roxbury (1998)

Directed by John Fortenberry

Comedy

Most recently watched by Javitron

Overview

Despite being well into adulthood, brothers Doug and Steve Butabi still live at home and work in the flower shop owned by their dad. They exist only to hit on women at discos, though they’re routinely unsuccessful until a chance run-in with Richard Grieco gets them inside the swank Roxbury club. Mistaken for high rollers, they meet their dream women, Vivica and Cambi, and resolve to open a club of their own.

Rated PG-13 | Length 81 minutes

Actors

Chris Kattan | Will Ferrell | Dan Hedaya | Molly Shannon | Richard Grieco | Loni Anderson | Elisa Donovan | Gigi Rice | Lochlyn Munro | Dwayne Hickman | Meredith Scott Lynn | Colin Quinn | Mark McKinney | Maree Cheatham | Kristen Dalton | Jennifer Coolidge | Michael Clarke Duncan | Twink Caplan | Eva Mendes | Chazz Palminteri | Joe Ranft | Agata Gotova | Rachel Galvin | Raquel Gardner | Kip King | Deborah Kellner | Dorian Spencer | Viveca Paulin

Viewing History (seen 1 time)

Viewing Notes

This was a DVD review originally written in September 2007 for PopSyndicate.com.

Did you grab my ass? I know your tricks

Head banging took on an all new meaning when Haddaway’s ““What is Love?”” rang out like a Riccola yodeler in the mid-nineties and Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan head-bopped their way into the hearts of America as two sleazy clubgoers determined to score, but failing every time. They were basically a mute, modern day version of Steve Martin and Dan Akroyd’s Festrunk Brothers (Two Wild and Crazy Guys). It was a one-note skit but it was funny every time and attracted huge actors like Tom Hanks and Jim Carrey. They were the cookie cutter templates for 90% of the guys that you’ll still see at Ghost Bar or some other trend-fest just like it.

Steve (Will Ferrell) and Doug Butabi (Chris Kattan) are two loveable lunkhead loser brothers that are determined to make their names with their own club after being repeatedly shot down at The Roxbury. After 21 Jump Street’s Richard Grieco rear-ends their van, he gets them in with Benny Zadir, a super-rich oddball nightclub owner with a phantom posterior pinch. Zadir buys their idea for a club: the inside is the outside and the outside is the inside. But Steve and Doug’s father has other plans for Steve to marry Emily (Molly Shannon) so that he can merge his plant store with her father’s lamp store to make the first Plant/Lamp Store. Those plans almost come to fruition after the brothers experience a heartbreak. Emily takes over Steve’s life and the boys’ dreams are almost dashed upon the disco ball.

Wayne’s World aside, Saturday Night Live skits-cum-movies generally haven’t been the biggest successes because, well, they were usually atrocious. But, Night at the Roxbury is one of those little gems that crowds missed at the box office. Written by Ferrell and Kattan, the bare bones short script is not a gatling gun of yuks, but it’s amusing and you can see little bits of the Will’s writing that would explode down the road into characters like Ricky Bobby. Roxbury is nowhere near Shakespeare, but the two add a thin layer of flesh to their characters and play them exactly as you would have expected, although you can see a clear divide between Ferrell’s little character nuances and Chris Kattan’s Mr. Peepers-esque stylings. Thankfully it clocks in at 82 minutes; anymore would have been tiring and overcompensating for these one-dimensional characters and razor thin plot. It already borders on too much.

There wasn’t exactly a clarion call for a new release of Night at the Roxbury; it was a move probably motivated more by exploiting Will Ferrell’s success than anything. There isn’t much in the way of extras, but anything helps. First up is ““Reliving the Roxbury,”” a surprisingly lengthy and detailed retrospective on the skit’s creation from when Ferrell and Kattan were with The Groundlings through the making of the movie. Also included are two production featurettes: ““Rags to Riches,”” which examines the set design and extensive costuming for the movie for every notable character in the movie, and ““Do That Dance,”” which looks at the film’s choreography. It’s more than I wanted to know about either subject but it helps to understand what goes into a movie. The last piece is ““Making the List,”” a looks at the makings of a hot club and explains why you can’t get past the velvet rope.

It’s not Talladega Nights or Blades of Glory, and it’s damn sure not Anchorman, but Night at the Roxbury is the missing gem in your Will Ferrell collection. If you have a Chris Kattan collection then I’m sorry.

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