2nd Happy Holidays Blogathon – The Night Before (2015)

This is the first of 3 posts dedicated to The 2nd Annual Happy Holidays Blogathon being held over at Pure Entertainment Preservation Society

Tnx Tiffany and Rebekah for letting me take part!

“[after slipping on assorted objects] She Home Alone’d me! ” – Chris

Number of Times Seen – 1 (10 Dec 2020)

Brief Synopsis – Three friends who have spent Christmas Eve together for over 15 years, decide to have one last powerful night before one of them becomes a father and will have to stop his yearly partying.

My Take on it – In order to add a bit of diversity to this blogathon, I decided to choose three films that have blatant Hanukah references.

This film’s main character is Jewish and spend the entire film with a Star of David design on his sweater.

Many of his comments relate to Judaism in some way and that helps make this holiday film really stand out for me.

This is a film that I had never heard of before and was an easy pick for this blogathon once I knew that it also had a Hanukkah connection along the way.

This movie has a great premise that works sow ell largely due to the perfect chemistry between the three leads. Seth Rogan, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Anthony Mackie all act as if they truly have been friends for decades.

Rogan is the best of the three because he takes his character to the extreme while also making him so much fun to watch as the story evolves.

They manage to develop his character well and we can understand his fears of fatherhood and how that will affect his relationship and friendship with his two best friends.

In addition to the three leads, the supporting cast is also fun to watch with Michael Shannon sanding out among them all.

The story here isn’t the most original idea, yet it works quite well in staying engaging throughout even if there are a few slight missteps along the way.

Love the way that this film has some great pop culture references and they do wonderful job making connections to Christmas films like Die Hard (1988) and Home Alone (1990) which further entrenches things into modern pop culture.

Bottom Line – Really fun film that works so well due to the great chemistry between the three leads. Rogan is superb in the lead role and makes things so much more enjoyable to watch. His character is developed really well and we can understand his obvious fears of being a new father and losing his freedom to hang out with his friends like he did for so many years. The supporting cast is also great and Shannon stands out among them all. The story itself isn’t the most original, yet it still manages to find a way to stay engaging from start to finish despite a few missteps along the way. The movie has some great reference sto some well known Christmas films like Die Hard (1988) and Home Alone (1990) that work so well and helps make the story even more entrenched in pop culture. Recommended!

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – There are many references to Die Hard (1988), including a character who likes to imitate Hans Gruber, the music to Ludwig van Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, and characters singing Run-D.M.C.’s “Christmas in Hollis.”(From IMDB)

Rating – Globe Worthy (8/10)