"Sleeping with Other People" never made it far past the festival circuit and a modest theatrical release, but it was probably the best romantic movie I saw this year. It's funny, smart, sexy and treats its main characters like knowable people rather than mice scuttling through the same tired old romcom maze.
Alison Brie and Jason Sudeikis play a pair who lost their virginity to each other back in college, and reconnect as friends. Unlike the usual romantic movie tropes, in which the couple spend the entire film ignoring the fact that they're perfect for each other, Lainey and Jake openly acknowledge their lingering attraction.
But they undertake a conscious effort to break free from their inability to commit, using each other as foils and advisers for the journey. They make a pledge not to hook up to see if they're capable of love without sex, a notion that of course gets tested.
The dialogue from writer/director Leslye Headland ("Bachelorette") is whip-smart and surprisingly honest. The supporting cast is uniformly good, existing as believable people who go on living their lives whenever they're not hanging around the main characters.
This is the sort of movie that blends romantic, comedic and dramatic elements so deftly that we don't work to label it.
Alas, bonus features are non-existent, on both DVD and Blu-ray editions.
"Sleeping with Other People" is the most ambitious romantic comedy I've seen since "(500) Days of Summer." It probably doesn't even belong in that category, since it contains many notes of drama and pathos in addition to plenty of laughs and witty wooing. It's also fairly raunchy, without ever showing any real skin.
It stars Alison Brie and Jason Sudeikis as a messed-up pair of lovers who run into each other about 10 or 15 years after losing their virginity to each other in college. Each was a late bloomer who finally decided sex was something to just have and get over with so it doesn't become a big thing. Neverthless, it became a big thing despite their one night stand, with neither able to commit despite a string of flings.
They resolve to have a platonic friendship, despite the attraction between them, basically as a test to see if they're capable of a loving relationship sans sex. This goes on for more than a year, with predictable results.
I say the end point of this story is unsurprising, but what's unconventional is how writer/director Leslye Headland ("Bachelorette") arrives at the destination.
We quickly know that Lainey (Brie) and Jake (Sudeikis) are meant for each other; usually these sorts of movies are an exercise in the audience waiting for the characters to catch up with them. But here the couple also senses this, talks about it between them, but decide to continue the experiment because they value the relationship that's grown more than they care about physical intimacy.
Take Jake, for instance. He's a variation of the wiseacre lothario, a guy we've seen in countless movies before. But here Sudeikis and the script endow the character with self-awareness and doubt. He presents to the world the image of a fearless ladies' man, but inside he knows he's mostly a coward who's afraid of women.
"If you want someone to fall for you, you gotta be you," Lainey advises.
"Yeah, I don't think I like me enough to introduce him to other people," Jake says, but we understand the loathing underneath the quip.
Lainey, for her part, has been pining for the same guy since college, secretly believing he would choose her despite the way he's always kept her on a shelf. Matthew, now a successful OB/GYN, is played by Adam Scott, who's cold and manipulative in a way we haven't seen from the self-effacing funnyman.
He's just one of a terrific supporting cast that fills in the gap around the main players. Amanda Peet plays Jake's new boss, whom he immediately puts into his crosshairs despite the professional barrier between them. (He threatens to quit, walking away from a contract that will make him a millionaire, in return for one date.)
Jason Mantzoukas shines as Jake's long-suffering best friend, who resents but secretly desires his hedonistic, attachment-free lifestyle. (An Ecstasy-fueled scene at his son's birthday party is one of the film's giddy high points.) Natasha Lyonne plays the counterpoint role of Lainey's wingwoman, offering sage advice and a prod when needed.
I don't like to make predictions about how a movie will do, but "Sleeping with Other People" feels like it will break out a number of careers. Headland crafts some of the cleverest lines and vivid characters I've seen in a while. Brie is charming and vulnerable, a woman who can both admire and, at times, pity.
Sudeikis, though, just steals the show. Headland sets him up with a juicy part and he cracks it out of the ballpark. It's a familiar archetype that he endows with all sorts of shadings and subtleties. Sudeikis is entertaining yet believable. Plus, he's funny as all get out, spewing one-liners at a near-constant pace.
This must-see take on modern love is tragic, wise and hilarious.
“About Last Night” is self-consciously different from the Rob Lowe/Demi Moore romantic comedy/drama from nearly 30 years (!) ago. The locale has moved from Chicago to L.A., and the white cast has been transposed with a black one. But fundamentally it’s still the same story.
It’s about lonely people who hook up for a brief fling and unexpectedly find it turning into a real relationship. By virtue of the fact that one of the stars is hyperactive funnyman Kevin Hart, this remake is infused with a lot more humor than the original.
There are enough laugh-out-loud moments to make it worth a rental. And if the somber moments don’t exactly carry much emotional heft, they at least don’t slow things down so much it saps energy from the funny stuff.
Hart plays Bernie, a motormouth charmer who has recently hooked up with a Joan (Regina Hall), an out-there personality with a quiet mouse of a roommate, Debbie (Joy Bryant). They fix her up with Bernie’s best friend Danny (Michael Ealy), and the two couples spend the next year falling in and out of love.
“About Last Night” may not offer any great insights into the modern dating game. But it’s the rare remake that doesn’t sully the name of the original.
Video extras are rather slim. The DVD comes with only a single featurette, “An Un-Romantic Comedy.” Upgrade to the Blu-ray edition and you add three more featurettes: “About Last Night Advice,” “I Love You?” and “Word on the Street.”
There's a moment in "About Last Night" in which the characters are actually watching a video of the 1986 film with Rob Lowe and Demi Moore, and argue about whether it's a chick flick or a guy's movie. It's a tacit but still brave acknowledgement that yes, this is a remake of a seminal '80s movie, which in turn was based on a play by David Mamet.
The new movie is funnier than the original, while still engaging in plenty of heavy moments as we explore two sets of best friends who hook up with one another on a one-night stand, and then spend the next year negotiating the treacherous territory that comes with being in a relationship -- and even debating whether they're in one.
The leading cast is gorgeous and engaging, and they're also all black, whereas the '86 cast was Caucasians. The movie uses this to its advantage without ever really getting hung up on the change in skin tone. Just as the characters quarrel fruitlessly about whether the original was primarily intended for men or women, it's wrongheaded to think of this as a "black movie," even if African-Americans are the primary targeted audience.
It's much the same way the film has switched scenery from Chicago to Los Angeles. Even though the original conception was very much about the Midwest metropolis -- Mamet's play was called "Sexuality Perversity in Chicago," after all -- the 2014 iteration gets its mood and groove from L.A.
The four main characters are all at that stage of life where they believe in working hard and playing harder, when going out to bars every night is seen as a duty, and the thought of being tied down by entanglement is anathema. It is, in other words, the life of many people in their early- to mid-20s, which Lowe and Moore were back in 1986. Here the actors are closer to 40, so their antics have a whiff of desperation about them.
Kevin Hart is seemingly everywhere these days, including riding the box office wave of "Ride Along" from just a few weeks ago. Here he's relegated to the wingman role of Bernie, an uber-confident chattermouth. His best bud is Danny (Michael Ealy), a quiet type who Bernie jokes is too good-looking to appreciate the women a guy like him has to work hard to turn into conquests.
Bernie has just landed another, Joan (Regina Hall), a bigger-than-life woman with an outsized personality and mood swings. Her roommate is Debbie (Joy Bryant), a smart businesswoman who's seemingly opted out of the romantic game. Pushed by Bernie and Joan, Danny and Debbie soon become a couple, much to the consternation of their friends, who chide them for rushing into anything serious.
The story plays out in a series of vignettes spread over the seasons -- who says "I love you" first, moving in together, holiday events blown up by jealousy, temptations from old lovers, etc. A subplot follows Danny in quitting the sales job he hates, only to end up bartending at the place owned by his deceased dad's best friend (Christopher McDonald).
This movie is sweet and cute, buoyed by Hart's frantic comedic persona. The screenplay by Leslye Headland is reminiscent of "(500) Days of Summer," and director Steve Pink keeps things loose and easy. The more dramatic sections slide in and out readily, not carrying a whole lot of emotional freight but never weighing down the proceedings too much.
Maybe in another 28 years, another remake of "About Last Night" will come, perhaps centering on Latinos in Miami, and they'll watch a snippet of this movie, and the memory will not be an unpleasant one.
