Rating: 7/10

It’s a shame this film hasn’t aged better, because it’s quite possibly the finest SNL feature film. Yes, better than “Wayne’s World”, “Superstar”, “The Ladies Man”, etc.

In a sense, the fim details the sisyphean struggle of outsiders desperately trying to gain access. In this case, it’s the Butabi brothers and the impenetrable Roxbury nighclub.

“A Night at the Roxbury” really belongs to Will Ferrell. On the surface, he plays the chump, a mix of Steinbeck’s Lenny and Ted of “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure”. Upon closer inspection, however, he’s a bit more like a stargazed mystic. A pre-coitus Ferrell stares at a painting and exclaims, “We look at this and see a picture of this lady, but to this lady are we just a picture of us? Did you ever think of that?” His misapprehensive gold-digging damsel views this as sheer stupidity, but is it? Will Ferrell’s Butabi shrugs it off, but to me these are the roots of what led to “Stranger than Fiction”; these are his true thesp beginnings.

Filed under: 1998 by A.B.