The Night Before Review

Jonathan Levine is unusually good at grief inside comedy, and the film's best instinct is that this ritual exists because one of these men lost his parents and the other two showed up. That gives the night a real undertow. New York at Christmas is shot with genuine warmth, and the film looks better than the genre demands. Anthony Mackie and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are relaxed, Rogen takes the broadest track as a man having a chemical crisis about impending fatherhood, and Michael Shannon walks in as a drug dealer who behaves like a Christmas spirit and steals every scene he is given.

Critics agree he is the film. The reservations concern the middle. The three storylines are separated for long stretches and only one of them is interesting, the drug trip material goes on well past its best joke, and the resolutions arrive on schedule with a neatness the earlier scenes had avoided. Several reviewers find the sentiment more successful than the comedy, which is an odd thing to say about this cast. It is affectionate, watchable, and roughly half as funny as it is warm.