I want to say Kevin Hart is this generation’s Eddie Murphy, but I’m still not sure he’s made his way to leading man status. After all About Last Night is just as much Hart’s movie as it belongs to Regina Hall (who kills it by the way), Michael Ealy and Joy Bryant. At the very least, joking on Hart’s 5’4″ stature is kept to a minimum, but hopefully one day he’ll line up a movie with Natalie Portman and even his height won’t be a plot point.
Leading man or not, director Steve Pink (Hot Tub Time Machine) knows who to focus on in this adaptation of David Mamet‘s 1974 play “Sexual Perversity in Chicago“, which was first adapted for the screen in 1986. As much as the drama between Danny and Debbie (Ealy and Bryant respectively) is a focal point, it’s Hart and Hall as Bernie and Joan that keep every scene moving, whether they’re together or not. But when you put these two together get ready for the comedic sparks to fly as About Last Night begins running on all cylinders.
It’s absolutely no surprise the script comes from Bachelorette writer/director Leslye Headland. She proved with Bachelorette she had a knack for biting, comedic, adult dialogue and Pink has assembled just the right characters to brings those words to life, though I’m a little tired of Ealy’s stick-in-the-mud, cheesing playboy performances. Does this guy ever lighten up? He seems especially stiff opposite Bryant whose bubbly personality as Debbie never makes it seem like the couple are a very good fit.
These kinds of movies always struggle, though, with the straight man portion of the story as this is largely a comedy, but the dramatic thru-line is there to keep you continually invested, offering moments for comedy within real life and About Last Night does that quite well.
While pretty much every scenario is heightened for the big screen — the process of dating, the honeymoon phase, the moving in phase, the opinions of friends and even struggles with life outside of the relationship — all are presented with a certain measure of reality. While the more raunchy and R-rated comedy is certainly the funniest — Hart dressed up for Halloween as Channing Tatum to Hall wearing a chicken head and, well… see the movie — even relationship scenarios such as the single man without a dining room table and the woman’s desire for a plethora of needless pillows made me laugh.
There isn’t too much else you can say. This is definitely a higher caliber, romantic comedy and had the drama largely surrounding Early worked a little better it could have been considered a possible all-timer and as much as hearing a couple new John Legend tracks is welcomed, I felt the soundtrack was a missed opportunity, but this is nitpicking and I enjoyed About Last Night way too much to do that.
If only more romantic comedies would take the comedy aspect of their film as seriously as this one does, we would all be more likely to overlook the cliched dramatic beats necessary to tell such stories. Wouldn’t it be something to actually want to go see more rom-coms? Well, trust me, you should be wanting to see About Last Night.
