A Night at the Roxbury

I gave up on watching Saturday Night Live 'round about the time Lorne Michaels started turning out hideous feature films based on "SNL" sketches like The Coneheads, Stuart Saves His Family, and It's Pat. If A Night at the Roxbury is any indication, the show that used to be cutting edge is still a dull and pointless pop culture butter knife. Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan reprise their roles as the clueless, head-bopping, club-hopping Butabi brothers, who are essentially a post-disco version of Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd's Czechoslovakian brothers. It's briefly amusing watching the Butabis spew out their decrepit pick-up lines; the problem is that once the sketch-based material is exhausted, you're forced to "humanize" characters that are much funnier as broad caricatures. We learn that the Butabis are really two guys with a dream to create their own nightclub. Do you think the Czechoslovakian brothers would be funnier as earnest immigrants in search of the American dream? And when A Night at the Roxbury isn't misguided, it's just plain sad, offering scary visions of Loni Anderson and Richard Grieco in what I hope were self-parodies, and delivering a laugh roughly every 15 minutes or so. One decent late sequence aside, A Night at the Roxbury continues two "SNL" traditions: loser brothers infatuated with trendy nightspots, and generally unwatchable feature films. Looks like I could pick up right where I left off. Not recommended. (S. Renshaw)[DVD Review—Sept. 4, 2007—Paramount, 81 min., PG-13, $14.99—Making its second appearance on DVD, 1998's A Night at the Roxbury (Special Collector's Edition) sports a so-so transfer with DVD extras including the 24-minute retrospective featurette “Score! Reliving A Night at the Roxbury,” a “Roxbury Rags” featurette on costume and fashion design (9 min.), a “Making the List” segment on getting into clubs (9 min.), the five-minute “Do that Dance!” featurette on the big dance number, and trailers. Bottom line: a fine “special collector's” extras package for a film that's neither special nor worth collecting.]