A Night at the Roxbury

Well, for all of you “Saturday Night Live” fans, this one may be for you. “A Night at the Roxbury” takes stupid comic relief to yet another level with those crazy cast members of SNL in this humorous expansion of the famed weekly sketch. I had somewhat hopeful expectations for enjoying a good laugh at this movie which featured SNL’s Steve (Will Ferrell) and Doug (Chris Kattan). These guys do a great job portraying the ultimate epitomy of wanna-be-suave-losers. This movie is definitely not a family-night-out pic, however. It has several scenes of partial exposures of the male and female anatomy as well as intentional sexual inuendos. Sexual content includes several instances of implied casual sexual intercourse (unmarried couples), near nudity (thong bikini bathing suits, topless female with back to camera) and many numerous sexual innuendos. There were also many instances of profanity, crude language, and verbal obscenities. In my opinion, “A Night at the Roxbury” should have an “R” rating (rather than PG-13) due to the aforementioned material.

The story line spins off from the SNL skit about 2 brothers trying to live life in the fast lane by picking up “hotties” (women), dressing in “suave” (cool) attire, and hitting up all of the nightclubs that they can. The poor duo cannot maintain 5 minutes of calm dignity when exposed to beautiful women. They go into spontaneous dancelike convulsions when put into a clublike environment surrounded with half-naked women. Inevitably they get thrown out of every club as a result of their bizarre behavior. “A Night at the Roxbury” is in the same league as “Dumb and Dumber”—two stupid men with weird personalities trying to be cool but getting slapped by offended females and entertaining the world with their stupidity.

The plot set forth in the movie has the two Butabi brothers trying to be successful entrepreneurs by setting up and owning their own nightclub that is by far more bizarre and alternative from any club ever established. Their father (Dan Hedaya of “Cheers”) desires Steve (his favorite son) to run the family business—a small floral shop. Hedaya is constantly downing Doug because of Doug’s lame fantasies of becoming a big club-owner one day. Their mother (played by none other than Loni Anderson) takes on a more June Cleaver persona with nothing more to talk about than the plastic surgery to her chin. Their father accomplishes splitting the brothers apart and betrothing Steve to the girl-next-door (SNL’s Molly Shannon). The movies breaks a 20-minute lull with a great wedding scene where Ferrell tries to hit on the bridesmaid with his ever-popular “Hey, what’s up” pick-up line. Kattan saves Ferrell from making the biggest mistake of his life by hypnotizing Steve with the monotonously played Hadaway’s dancehouse music hit.

Richard Greico (as himself) makes several cameo appearances in which he finally convinces Hedaya to accept the Butabi brother’s dream of becoming what they want to be instead of being forced into a boring lifestyle of the family business. The movie has a wonderful ending with loads of laughs. My wife and I admittedly enjoyed this comedy, but caution must be adhered to the portrayed worldly selfish lifestyles that is not God-honoring.