Another “Saturday Night Live” skit-to-screen comedy. This one isn’t as abysmal as “The Coneheads” or “It’s Pat,” but it’s certainly not on par with “Wayne’s World” or “The Blues Brothers.” SNLers Chris Kattan and Will Ferell reprise their head-bopping Butabi brothers, and spend the entirety of the film trying to get into the Roxbury, L.A.’s hottest night club. Of course the fashion-challenged siblings — replete with chains and polyester — think they’re the hottest movers and shakers since John Travolta in “Saturday Night Fever,” but they’re really a pair of delusional dimwits who live at home, can’t get laid and are shunned at every club door. Along the way a woman comes between them (SNL’s Molly Shannon in an uproarious bit) they schmooze with the Pat Lyons of L.A. (Chazz Palminteri,), hang out with Richard Grieco and get berated by their controling father (Dan Hedaya looking ripe for a coronary).
There are few subtle moments in “A Night at the Roxbury.” Its forced slapstick egregiously mugs the audience for laughs, and while things occasionally hit the warm, goofiness of “The Wedding Singer,” the film’s real star is the retro-hip, disco soundtrack (“What is Love”) that sustains the sherds of momentum with a throbbing, rhythmic energy. If only SNL alum, Mike Myers, had tossed his “54” shtick into this flick, there might have been at least one entertaining cinematic take on club life.
