Seth Rogen's latest comedy "The Night Before" has drawn heavy flak from reviewers, with the Catholic News Service classifying the movie as "morally offensive" for containing "blasphemous humour, constant, benignly viewed drug use, full nudity, semi-graphic casual sexual activity and pervasive rough and crude language."
The movie, it would seem, is aimed at deliberately offending Christian viewers, according to the Toronto Sun. "Transgressions are plenty. They include seeing Rogen's Isaac wearing a Star of David 'Christmas' sweater while puking his guts out at midnight mass where he rails loudly against the charge that Jews killed Jesus. That scene alone tells you that 'The Night Before' has no compunction about being offensive to anyone who is uptight about the true significance of Christmas," the Sun's movie review says.
"The Night Before" stars Rogen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Anthony Mackie as lifelong friends who reunite every Christmas Eve for a night of "debauchery."
Rogen earlier made fun of the book of Revelations in the 2013 comedy film "This Is the End."
During an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, Rogen claimed that "The Night Before" was not really meant to discredit Christmas nor make fun of it since it highlights the same spirit of traditional Christmas films.
"Our film is set at Christmas and carries a lot of the tropes and themes that Christmas movies do, but it doesn't set out to alienate people," he said. "One of our actual goals was to make a movie that would get played on television every year so you can't do that if you're mocking the holiday that you want to be played on."
As for any jokes hurled against Christians, Rogen had this to say: "You can make fun of Christians, they're cool. Christians have their own (expletive) to deal with, they're not worried about us. So on the scale of controversial waters one could possibly navigate, this movie was very low on that list, I would say. If anything, we may offend Jews because we made a Christmas movie."
