Review of About Last Night

Introduction

“About last night” is a romantic comedy starring Rob Lowe as Danny, a young man who likes nothing better than to spend his nights with his best mate Bernie (James Belushi) until he meets Debbie (Demo Moores) at a bar and the two start a relationship with a one night stand. Will their relationship survive? Will their previous friendships survive? Watch the DVD to find out :P.

The movie was an adaptation of a play called “Sexual Perversity in Chicago” by David Marmet. Whilst I know nothing about the play I am bloody glad that they changed the title.

Video

The movie displays an anamorphic 1:1.85 transfer that quite surprised me. As you’ll find out later on this Columbia Tristar DVD hasn’t received any special treatment whatsoever so it was somewhat surprising to see a very clear picture. Baring in mind the movie was made in 1986 and was never a huge success we are treated to a very good transfer. Flesh tones are very realistic (more on the flesh later) and overall I was quite impressed.

Audio

Aside from the picture quality favourite feature of the DVD format has to be Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. Shame this one has a very basic Dolby Surround audio track then. It’s not even Dolby Pro-Logic I ask you! Being a movie about people we are not talking about a big action soundtrack but there are many scenes that would have benefitted from a decent soundtrack. The soundstage is never involving and overall I was disappointed.

Features

Hmmmmmmmm, it’s about time that studios started offering discs with minimal extras at a reduced cost. This disc has a trailer and filmographies, and that’s it. The menus are static but the back of the box boats that they are interactive. On some level they are, on the level that you make one choice and that’s it. Interaction implies a little more involvement in my book.

One surprising fact that I stumbled across quite by accident is that the disc supports subtitles for 20 languages!! Pretty pointless for anyone who can speak English but just a useless little fact from yours truly :P.

Conclusion

I would badge this as “The movie that time forgot”. This is very much a movie out or time in that it’s hopelessly trapped in the 80’s through it’s useage of numerous one-night stands and it’s fashion sense. It goes even further than that though with allot of the dialogue being so dated that it’s cringe-worthy in parts. It was kind of bizarre to see a movie based on a one night stand, more importantly to see the movie handle the premise of a one night stand so flippantly compared to today’s far more rigid standards. It reminded me of “The Wedding Singer” but without the great music of comedy.

The cast are a mixed bunch. Remember I mentioned flesh earlier on? Well if you ever wondered what Demi Moore looked liked before she took a bicycle pump to her breats for “Striptease” then this is the film you should watch. Plenty of tit-shots here but for once Demi Moore is more outstanding than here breasts. Demi is very good in this roll I must say. This is one of her earlier parts but you can easily see how this led to her more prolific rolls.

James Belushi is . . . . James Belushi. He has some of the worst lines in the movie but also was the only character to make me laugh. There is a great bit where he is helping Demo Moore move her stuff involving a bra that made me laugh out loud. Overall though James Belushi is wasted here.

The award for “stands out like a sore thumb” goes to Rob Lowe. He is simply dreadful. He spends most of the movie simply smiling his way through s*** scenes with even worse dialogue. I am even more certain than ever that he got other parts simply because of his boyish good looks and his 12” tongue :). He really is dreadful.

Acting aside there are some funny moments and more than a few scenes I could empathise with than I would care to mention. I admit I enjoyed this movie more than I thought I would but not enough for me to recommend it. I remember the 80’s very fondly indeed but this movie just sucks up too much of that culture and as a result it doesn’t stand the test of time.

A poor DVD of a movie that was probably better viewed in the 1980’s. Overall not one I can recommend. The movie itself isn’t too bad and might have been saved if they had put more effort into the DVD.