Oh man. Here I was thinking I was going to wrap up this retrospective without having to watch anything that was truly terrible. Good Lord, was I wrong. Rough Night is quite an apt title. This ill-fated attempt at a raunchy ensemble comedy was a chore to get through. Like The Other Boleyn Girl, I deliberately selected Rough Night for this series because it's one of very few such roles for Scarlett Johansson, and falls outside the types of films I usually watch. Unfortunately, also like The Other Boleyn Girl, it ended up being a reminder of why I don't often care for such fare.

Rough Night comes across like a comedy that was directly adapted from its earliest, roughest pitch; without ever being expanded, punched up, rewritten, or given any input from anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of humor or timing. This is to say – it's not funny. It's a premise that definitely has the potential for humor, and it's full of different set pieces and plot threads that are ripe for both verbal and visual comedy, but it feels like the idea never got beyond an empty framework, a setup with no punchline.

The narrative this film is built around a-night-of wild-revelry-interrupted-by-an-accidental-death-that-leads-to-increasingly-absurd-circumstances-as-the-characters-comically-struggle-to-cover-it-up, a tried-and-true comedic premise that can succeed in a number of ways. The trouble is, Rough Night doesn't take any of these routes to success. It's not screwy or slapsticky enough to be a Weekend at Bernie's-style madcap comedy, as much of its humor is derived from dialogue and character relationships, but as such, it's also not nearly dark enough to be a successful black comedy. Every attempt at either approach falls pronouncedly flat, leading to an awful secondhand embarrassment akin to watching a performer try and fail with increasing desperation to make an audience laugh.

It should be noted that all of Rough Night's failures lie in the writing and not the performances. A capable ensemble cast of proven comedic players do the best they can, but the script just isn't there. This makes things even more frustrating. One exasperatedly wonders how a movie featuring the well-documented comedic talents of Kate McKinnon, Bo Burnham, Eric Andre, and Ty Burrell, as well as versatile performers such as Scarlett Johansson, Zoe Kravitz, and Dean Winters, could so miserably fail to be the least bit amusing. Were none of these people given a crack at punching up the script? Creating something so bad with the involvement of actors so good is almost an accomplishment in itself.

This series has one installment left, and, thankfully, it's a film I already know I enjoy.