Paramount, Rated PG-13
Directed by Peter Markle and John Fortenberry
Written by Steve Koren and Will Ferrell & Chris Kattan & Amy Heckerling & Jim Carrey & Christopher McQuarrie

A Night at the Roxbury is the latest in a long line of films based on "Saturday Night Live" sketches that range in quality from The Blues Brothers and Wayne's World to It's Pat! and Blues Brothers 2000. This film is somewhere in the middle. It has plenty of chuckle-worthy moments but very few of them are truly hilarious. It's somewhere just below the underrated Stuart Saves His Family and Wayne's World 2.
The movie is the first to be based on a sketch from the current "Saturday Night Live" cast, who have managed to rescue the show once again from the brink of cancellation 3 years ago. Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan, two of the most talented of the current ensemble, play two loser brothers named Steve and Doug Butabi who spend a majority of their time going to clubs failing miserably at picking up women. A good portion of this movie is more sad than funny, because people like this exist and so the fact that the characters are so utterly clueless sometimes backfires on the gags in the film. Anyway, the plot, if it matters, has to do with the brothers trying to start up their own club with the help of a rich man they met one night at one of the more exclusive clubs in town. However, this plot seems to be completely abandoned after a while when the brothers have a falling out and Steve ends up engaged to Emily (Molly Shannon, another current SNL cast member), who seems to only be after Steve so that her father and his father can merge businesses. And there's still another plot about two gold-digging women who are fooled into thinking that the Butabis are rich.
The fact that the plot seems completely unfocused and the movie is less than an hour and a half is the movie's biggest weakness. The multiple plotlines are just there to set up the jokes, most of which are barely funny. However, once Steve and Doug have their falling out, the movie becomes a lot funnier. Perhaps I was sick of seeing them in clubs all the time (I'm definitely not a fan of dance music) so I enjoyed this turn of events. Anyway, if you can make it through the first hour, you'll probably enjoy the last 25 minutes or so much more than the rest, and it's this last 25 minutes that keeps this movie from being a total failure. **