The Night Before (2015), R, ★★★

It's the most wonderful time of the year for these stoners.

Let's recap my Love the Coopers review. I am a sucker for Christmas movies again but that experience with that film with Diane Keaton and John Goodman was such a dull nightmare that you can see every cliched scene coming but it's a side with an awkward dinner with such stale dialogue that you want to retreat from the dinner table and throw the leftovers in the trashcan. That film felt like a leftover that was in the refrigerator for 5 years. Putrid. But, after a cup of alcoholic eggnog (just kidding), I badly wanted a good Christmas movie to return to form. Even though it is a raunchy holiday comedy with a few predictable jokes, this is a well-balanced Christmas comedy with some truth and heart that is served with a side of hilarious stoner jokes.

On Christmas Eve, 2001, Ethan Miller (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) lost his parents in a car accident. His best friends, Isaac Greenberg (Seth Rogen) and Chris Roberts (Anthony Mackie) promised him to start a tradition to hang out every Christmas Eve. Some years later, they find out from a woman walking out that the Nutcracker Ball - the craziest Christmas party ever - was awesome. They try to find out where it is primarily but they have no luck.

In the present day, Chris is a famous football player secretly using steroids to boost up his performance while Isaac is married to Betsy (Jillian Bell) and is expecting their first baby. Ethan is a struggling musician who has broken up with his girlfriend, Diana (Lizzy Caplan) and has been working as an elf. While tending to the coats, Ethan finds three tickets to the Nutcracker Ball. He is excited and runs out with the tickets. Isaac, Ethan and Chris reunite at a party hosted by Betsy's sister, Cindy (Helene Yorke). Isaac and Chris want to end their yearly tradition because they are moving in different directions, but Ethan is not quite ready.

Before, the three buddies head out the door, Betsy gives Isaac a gift that is full of drugs - weed, coke, shrooms, etc. Since Chris is sponsored by Red Bull (product placement), he has a limo and they go out on the town. They go in front of the tree in the city where Ethan shows his friends the tickets. They go celebrate by parodying Big by playing on the FAO Schwarz piano but singing Kanye West's runaway and also they get weed from a drug dealer, whose celebrity's name I cannot spoil. Just see the movie to find out who it is. It is a riot.

Fellow female pals: Mindy Kaling and Lizzy Caplan.

Director Jonathan Levine, who has directed the very good cancer comedy, 50/50, has again, as I mentioned before, does a good job of balancing the laughs with the realism that many friends have to go through as they grow up: a sense of vulnerability to leave some great traditions behind. Also, to have to move forward from familiar and routine lives with great friends. It is another movie in sort of the same of the league with leaving behind familiarity and moving on towards adult independence like Brooklyn, a great coming-of-age drama with Saoirse Ronan. It is a difficult task to combine the "naughty and nice" in this comedy to fulfill both the laughs and sweetness.

Seth Rogen is a likable actor also giving another funny performance, but asides from his usual gimmicks of raunch and comical jokes, he also gives another mature performance because his character arc is that he does not know how to handle the fact that he is going to be a father while being stoned. Joseph Gordon-Levitt gives a fun performance with some depth of trying to leave good times behind and also Anthony Mackie provides a good boost with some laughs and some depth of a family celebrating the holidays. Also, the female supporting cast gives some persona and depth of wanting to celebrate Christmas: Lizzy Caplan, Jillian Bell, Mindy Kaling. They are all wonderful.

Some jokes misfire because it tries too hard to become the ultimate holiday stoner comedy. And, also, there is a plot regarding the biggest party ever that if you take away that element, it would not matter. So, if Levine would've retreated some of the "necessary" plot from the movie and delve into some of the personal relationships and matters with the characters and with the holidays and make it tighter, it would've been a great Christmas movie. However, this is a nice and fun Christmas movie with all the laughs and themes of becoming an adult and trying to get used to it. Also, it is a sweet Christmas movie. Finally, a good movie I can watch during the holidays in the future.

***