Best Night Ever - Una notte da leonesse

One must give longtime parody directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer some credit for branching out into new territory with their latest film, Best Night Ever. Being that the duo has grossed millions upon millions of dollars with each abysmal parody film after another, the duo had really no reason to stray from their niche; they found something that worked and made them a great deal of money each time. Why become diverse when they've already stuck gold? But randomly and all of a sudden, a film by the name of Best Night Ever was thrown into production by them, a raunchy comedy centered on an all female cast of characters who are hitting Las Vegas for their one friend's bachelorette party, which turns into a messy state of affairs after they are robbed for their money, purses, shoes, and their jewelry, including ones expensive wedding ring.

What ostensibly would play like an exciting and fun romp akin to Bridesmaids, or even The Hangover, however, turns overly-crass, shamelessly raunchy without even a hint of wit or subtlety, and exhausting by the thirty minute mark. As someone who was slightly (but cautiously) optimistic about how Friedberg and Seltzer's style of comedy would be conducted for a film wasn't a competition for references, I was disappointed (but unsurprised) that their humor outside of overcompensating references is largely predicated off of grotesque shock humor, where the female characters say and do the most revolting things in hopes they are funny enough for the audience. Lines like "My g-string is like a slip and slide" and witnessing a woman urinate and defecate on an innocent man's face is what we have to succumb to watching Best Night Ever.

The four female leads have almost no personality, so why refer to them by their names? Let's call them what they are; The Bride-to-Be (Desiree Hall), The Uppity Sister of the Bride-to-Be (Samantha Colburn), The Obnoxious Best Friend of the Bride-to-Be (Eddie Ritchard), and The Lewd and Dirty-Mouthed Friend of the Bride-to-Be (Crista Flanagan) all set out to have a fun girls night out, filming their travels thanks to the help of a hand-held camera. After The Obnoxious Best Friend of the Bride to Be tries to make a cocaine deal after the girls get kicked out of a strip club, the quartet of girls are robbed for everything they have and must find a way to get money in the heartland of Vegas so they can return home.

It's a tad frightening how much Friedberg and Seltzer seem to hate their female characters. The movie predicates itself off of showing them getting into trouble, being entirely irresponsible, childish, petty, and downright annoying, with consequences to their behavior at every turn that are ugly and downright cruel. Think Spring Breakers with none of the social commentary nor insights; this is true bad behavior on display with nothing significant to say at all.

The film is almost entirely comprised of scenes involving total hell breaking loose, chaotic parties, and the girls racing from place to place in a stolen limo. The editing here, is disastrous, with the hand-held-camera being another useless gimmick, and cuts, shots, and entire sequences being assembled in an incoherent order. The entire cut-and-paste editing job here fails to give the scenes in the film any feelings of placement and basic structure and, in turn, we get a cacophony of madness in the sound and editing department.

Speaking of sound, in addition, towards the second and third act, almost the entirety of character dialog is comprised of obnoxious screaming, yelling, and exhaustive, high-pitched noise. This style is absurd and annoying, especially when one realizes this is what the film substituted actual character development for.

What we have here, in summation, is an attempt at something "new" for the directors that revolves around making female characters look disturbingly irresponsible and juvenile, characters who don't even deserve an assigned name, repetitive and downright unfunny shock humor, awful editing, and a script where about two-thirds of the lines of dialog are written out as *high-pitched screams from all the girls.* It almost becomes bad enough to the point where saying that the film is better than Friedberg and Seltzer other films isn't even an accurate statement.

Starring: Desiree Hall, Samantha Colburn, Eddie Ritchard, and Crista Flanagan. Directed by: Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer.

I didn't see this movie in the theater when it came out. I had no interest. I have not watched any of the Friedberg and Seltzer spoofs since they never do well and are pretty much hated by critics. I caught this on prime. I have to admit I laughed quite a bit in spite of myself. It is really just a found footage mashup of Bridesmaids and The Hangover. It has no story just 4 friends in Vegas having an awful night during a bachelorette party trip. Its fast moving and very crude. These guys make the Farrelly brothers seem tame! The actresses are all pretty unknown but give it their all. The film has alot of energy. The good thing is that it is short. I laughed hard multiple times.

Grade: C+

I like movies like Bridesmaids and the To-do List where the girls put it down like the boys in these raunchy comedies. Remembering the time when Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett, put down the slapstick better than their male counter parts. Now we have giants like Kristen Wiig and Melisa McCartney setting the bar high for the ladies that try to follow them.

Perhaps a little too high for this late night comedy about four women on a bachelorette party that goes out of control. The film had it's moments, like in a role reversal situation where the girls are penalized for accidentally touching a male stripper, whose becomes offended by it.

But the movie still feels like more talk and less action with their attempts to be on the same level of wildness like you would see in the Hangover. In all fairness though it is a direct-to-video B-movie, so how much could they do?

The movie's down point was the found footage point of view angle, with one of the ladies always holding a video cam. Whenever this approach is done badly, it really degrades a movie that had potential.

The whole movie felt like it was written for dudes to star in but then rewritten poorly to have the roles be female. I give it an A for effort in my book, but there better flicks to watch than this.

Found footage has its claws everywhere by now. Even with this comedy, about a group of girls trying to party and celebrate the night before one of them is going to get married. Fittingly (if you want to see it in a positive light) the German title of the movie became "Hangover Girls" (with "added" 3D effects for some odd reason too).

Not every joke is hitting the spot (if you'll excuse the pun), but it has some nice drive to it or maybe its the charm of a B-movie that surrounds it. I thought it did well to hide the fact that it didn't have enough money, by making things appear as story elements (we can't go there, because ... something or other). Of course this can be seen as cheap too (which it literally is), but I'm not holding that against it. I've seen worse but obviously also better movies ...

When is Hollywood going to realize that five things are necessary in good cinema: great camera transitions and camera work, a good soundtrack,interesting sets,a convincing premise-one that enables you to suspend disbelief, and good acting. A camera artist can suggest someone making love by a slow pan to a window sill,can change sets by panning to a tree. Camera work is an art and one that I especially enjoy in movie entertainment. It's time to throw the young turks with their belief that you can make good cinema with a handcam out on their ears. Good camera transitions have identified good cinema since.....Citizen Kane. And even light romcoms benefit from good camera work.

A good soundtrack establishes how you FEEL during the scenes and are especially important to the finale of the movie. Interesting sets can make the dullest movie more enjoyable. And a good premise combined with good acting can enable you to suspend disbelief in the wackiest movies- can make you believe in elves and dragons for a short time. Just saying-throw the handcam away....or give it to a family with a kid and get back to REAL cinema where the sum of each artists work is revealed in the whole.Anyone that makes movies any other way is wasting their time and yours.