THE AISLE SEAT - "A NIGHT AT THE ROXBURY"
by Mike McGranaghan
I'm probably one of the few people who still watches "Saturday Night Live" on a weekly basis. Although the writing is often bland, I admire the talents of the performers. One of the more popular skits these days is the one involving the Butabi brothers, those uncool club-hoppers who are always bobbing their heads to the tune of Haddaway's "What is Love." I've laughed at the skit in the past, but it's an awfully thin premise to be turned into a feature-length film. That hasn't stopped "SNL" producer Lorne Michaels from making A Night at the Roxbury, an 80-minute version of the skit.
Chris Kattan and Will Ferrell star as Doug and Steve Butabi. Their dream is to somehow gain entrance into the famous Roxbury nightclub, but they are never able to make it past the bouncer. One night, they finagle their way in (with some assistance from an 80's TV icon) and figure their lives have changed. They meet a couple of wild women, as well as gain the attention of the club's owner, Mr. Zadir (an unbilled Chazz Palminteri), who keeps asking everyone the same question: "Are you grabbing my ass?" The Butabis propose a new nightclub that catches the owner's interest. He wants to go into business with them but his toady (Colin Quinn) has other ideas.
Meanwhile, their flower-shop owner father (Dan Hedaya) wants them to follow in the family business. He also wants Steve to marry Emily (Molly Shannon), the annoying daughter of a lamp store magnate. Emily holds nothing back in the way she hits on Steve ("I'm really good at making out," she tells him matter-of-factly) but he wants to be free to pursue his "swinging" lifestyle.
A Night at the Roxbury is basically a movie with one joke, and it keeps repeating that joke over and over and over. The joke is that the Butabi brothers aren't as cool as they think they are. The joke is punctuated with a lot of that head bobbing stuff. Sometimes it's funny (as in a dance number staged in a moving car to the 80's chestnut "Pop Music") although after a while, it just gets stale. Kattan and Ferrell are both very talented guys, but these characters were created for a five-minute sketch. There isn't enough of an outside world for them to inhabit and still be funny. For something like this to work, you have to believe the characters are somehow plugged into the real world, that they exist beyond the confines of their short "SNL" sketch. The Butabi brothers never even spoke before this film, so the movie really has to stretch to make them credible.
The biggest laughs come from the wonderful Molly Shannon, who is one of the most underrated comic performers we have right now. In only a few short scenes, she makes Emily an interesting, well-defined character. I understand that Shannon will be making a movie out of her Catholic schoolgirl character, Mary Catherine Gallagher. Now there's a character who must have an interesting life outside of her skit.
While I can't recommend A Night at the Roxbury, I have to admit that seeing it was a painless experience. In other words, although I didn't exactly like it, I really didn't hate it either. The film is mildly amusing in a brainless sort of way, yet it certainly is not a laugh riot. On the scale of "SNL" movies, it has little of the wit or creativity of Wayne's World, but it sure is a lot better than It's Pat.
(
out of four)
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