As with all of these SNL spinoffs (It's Pat, Coneheads, Wayne's World ,Stuart Saves His Family), the project's success hinges upon the writers' ability to dream up enough viable backstory to turn single-gag skits into watchable 90-minute films. Both, it turns out, center upon their tireless efforts to breach the citadel of LA's glitzy Roxbury club and eventually become clubowners themselves. The Butabi Brothers (Ferrell and Kattan), SNL's mongoose-necked, rayon-suited disco commandos, are now the subject of a full-length feature that answers all our urgent questions about their backgrounds and aspirations. Still, movies as flagrantly vacant and pointless as A Night at the Roxbury do raise the question of how long the gods will keep letting us whiz away our precious moments of mortal existence before they simply get fed up and incinerate us all with plasma beams. Far be it from me to oppose manifest destiny. And unlike many, I seldom even wonder how this bizarre passion began or why it persists in the face of such meager demand. The entertaining, satisfying climactic stretch, which boasts an admittedly hilarious Say Anything… reference, ensures that the whole thing concludes on a relatively compelling note, at least, with the end result a barely-passable SNL comedy that certainly could’ve fared a whole lot worse.Like all movie fans, I'm awed by Hollywood's relentless Napoleonic obsession with making movies of all known Saturday Night Live skits. There’s little doubt, however, that A Night at the Roxbury isn’t entirely able to justify its feature-length running time, as the movie, though running about 77 minutes without credits, suffers from a handful of palpable lulls and ineffective subplots that cumulatively prevent the viewer from ever wholeheartedly embracing the material. It’s a thin premise that’s employed to mostly watchable yet exceedingly hit-and-miss effect by John Fortenberry, as the filmmaker, working from a script by Ferrell, Kattan, and Steve Koren, delivers a relatively brisk comedy that benefits from its stars’ likeable work and an ongoing emphasis on admittedly amusing gags and set-pieces – with the movie, in addition, certainly receiving plenty of mileage out of the appealing efforts of an eclectic supporting cast that includes Dan Hedaya, Molly Shannon, and Michael Clarke Duncan. Based on the Saturday Night Live sketch, A Night at the Roxbury follows Will Ferrell’s Steve and Chris Kattan’s Doug as they attempt to overcome a series of obstacles to own their own nightclub.
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