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Friday, February 14, 2014

MOVIE REVIEW About Last Night (2014)
In Los Angeles, Relationship Seekers And Fidelity


Michael Ealy as Danny and Joy Bryant as Debbie in Steve Pink's "About Last Night".  Matt Kennedy/Screen Gems
       
by Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com        FOLLOW                                            TWEET
Friday, February 14, 2014

Almost 30 years after Ed Zwick's "About Last Night", Steve Pink's updated edition moves two couples west to Los Angeles.  Over a year Danny (Michael Ealy) and Debbie (Joy Bryant) have their ups and downs as a couple.  Their uber partners in crime are the louder, extroverted Joan (Regina Hall) and Bernie (Kevin Hart) are together and not, in bed and out of it.  They are the devil on the shoulders of the tamer, discreet Danny and Debbie, interfering and instigating.

Bernie and Danny are office mates who drink like fishes.  It's a miracle they're able to work at all.  Every other scene it seems, has them downing shots or beer or wine.  Their ladies are polar opposites.  Debbie is a quiet, shy sort, and Joan an exhibitionist.  The female (and male) profiles displayed are shallow.  Danny is a mild-mannered guy until he's not.  Bernie is a motor mouth who never slows down.  Sometimes what he has to say is very funny.  Most other times it isn't.  (For better or worse Ms. Hill turns on the shrill factor too, and has her moments.)  Mr. Hart's wheelhouse is films like these, and he, Ms. Hall and Mr. Ealy all starred in "Think Like A Man" (2012), which this film isn't that dissimilar to.

Mr. Pink's update comes amidst today's online dating and a generation that has more or less surpassed outright booty calls and settled in to a hookup culture akin to some of the exploits in Lena Dunham's "Girls".  Everything relations-wise is transitory and ephemeral.  The I-hate-you-so-much-I-want-you mantra burns deep in "About Last Night", which pays homage to the original (with a clip from it among other things.)  Hysteria trumps sweetness, and Leslye Headland's thin screenplay, based on the '86 film script and David Mamet's play "Sexual Perversity In Chicago" gets down in the weeds of anatomy.

Mr. Hart and Ms. Hall ratchet up the wild and sometimes buffoonish cartoon characters they play, but it's the poor editing of the film that is its biggest distraction and downfall.  Tracey Wadmore-Smith and Shelly Westerman make the mistake of  editing "About Last Night" as if it were an action movie.  Cuts occur every split-second.  Very few scenes are allowed to breathe.  I felt I was following a ping-pong ball back and forth over a net.  As a Hollywood romantic comedy (read: low bar to clear), "About Last Night" has little meat on its bones.  Its production design sketches were one of the few things that kept me engaged.

That said, neither "About Last Night" film is especially distinctive.  The new film reveals little about relations between men and women in the 21st century except that the interactions onscreen here are more juvenile than authentically misunderstood.  Paula Patton follows her deplorable "Baggage Claim" with a strange, forgettable cameo.  The question is, will "About Last Night" 2014 be forgotten anytime soon?  Perhaps.  Maybe it will become a guilty pleasure.  It just wasn't mine.

Also with: Christopher McDonald.

"About Last Night" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association Of America for sexual content, language and brief drug use.  The film's running time is one hour and 28 minutes.

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