A Night at the Roxbury (1998, PG-13)

By James Brundage

It’s all a conspiracy towards cheap movies. It’s all a conspiracy towards cheap movies because some of them have become not an object to entertain but a calculated bomb. Something that was made cheap, made quick, and made bad. They [the movie execs] know it will bomb. They know that people will come out of the theater feeling as if they wasted their money. But, friends, Roman, countrymen… people who will hat the movie with a religious passion… they also know we’ll see it, and they know they’ll make up their budget.

It’s something they do with their Madison Avenue boys. They teach them mind tricks and manipulations, slights of hand, scams, lies, and cheats. They teach them how to make the worst movie seem like a pile of good jokes, glitz, and glamour. They did such a thing to A Night at the Roxbury.

To sum it up in a sentence: A Night at the Roxbury is a cheap, dumb movie that makes Firestorm and The Wedding Singer look like fine art, made by a couple of members of the BAA (Barfly Association of America) who act themselves on Saturday Night Live weekly at the exact moment when we decide to turn off our TV sets and go to bed. There is no humor; there is no redeeming value. There is no possibility of fun at this movie. Sure, a few very stupid eight-year-olds laughed behind me once or twice, but, aside from that, the theater was silent enough to hear crickets. I have nothing against SNL. I loved Wayne’s World, like most of the works of Adam Sandler, and would never say a bad word against Chris Farley. It’s just that this wouldn’t work as a skit. It wouldn’t work as anything. Wait… no. It would work very well for target practice.