About Last Night

About Last Night is the latest in an increasingly long line of lily-white ‘80s and ‘90s films remade primarily for Black, middle-class audiences. It's an idea that dates back to 1972’s Blakula and 1978’s The Wiz, but Hollywood’s recent obsession with remakes, reboots, and re-imaginings has practically turned this practice into a genre unto itself. Recently, we've seen new versions of Steel Magnolias, Can't Buy Me Love, The Karate Kid, and Dirty Dancing with predominately African-American characters. But unlike so many remakes, Steve Pink’s About Last Night avoids simply rehashing what was good about the original and brings a contemporary edge and perspective to its subject matter. The new film feels worth it.

Edward Zwick directed the first About Last Night, which came out in 1986 and starred Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, James Belushi, and Elizabeth Perkins. Like many people, I enjoyed Zwick's film when it was first released, but the fact that I still consider it a really good movie puts me in a distinct minority. I'll concede that the picture is dated, but no more so than the 1974 play on which it was based, David Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago, a caustically comedic examination of the different ways men and women approach dating, sex, and sexual politics. As is the case with most of Mamet's explorations of gender issues, his play feels insightful enough to be interesting, but it never achieves brilliance; what makes Sexual Perversity so entertaining and memorable is the playwright's signature dialogue, which crackles with cynicism, anger, and vitality. Zwick's movie softened Mamet’s tone and transformed the play into a more traditional Hollywood romcom, making it funny, sexy, and ultimately hopeful. The 2014 picture restores and updates much of the play's original edge, but it also amps up the melodrama, resulting in a funnier but more contrived movie.

Pink’s film certainly meets my criteria for a remake (as opposed to a new version of a pre-existing non-film property). Not only does it use the original film’s title, but it takes as much of its structure from the ’86 screenplay by Tim Kazurinsky and Denise DeClue as it does from Mamet’s original text. But as much as I like the Zwick movie, I wish Pink and his team had disregarded it entirely and concentrated instead on pushing for a bolder reinterpretation of the play. The new film’s screenplay, by playwright Leslye Headland (best known for her “Seven Deadly Sins” cycle), enriches and empowers Mamet’s female characters and levels the gender playing field, a shift that's immediately apparent. Both the play and the 1986 film begin with some sexual banter between the two film's male characters, Danny (the romantic lead) and Bernie (his best friend). It's an opening that has become iconic. The 2014 version preserves this hot start but adds a twist: there's now a corresponding exchange between the ladies of the movie, Debbie and Joan. In the older film and the play, Bernie regales Danny with a wildly exaggerated anecdote about an anonymous hookup the previous night; in this one, Headland and Pink cut back and forth between the two pairs, with Bernie and Joan each telling their friend about a sexual adventure from the previous evening. Since Bernie and Joan are talking about hooking up with each other, and they both tell one half of the story, the combined details of their narratives, though wild, come across as a factual account of what actually happened rather than amusingly overblown fantasy. 

It's a change that illustrates two major differences between this picture and its predecessor. There's a cultural difference, namely, that it's OK for men and women to be equally funny and uninhibited in a contemporary comedy. And there's a structural difference too: like the play, but unlike the Zwick picture, the Pink film is a four-hander, in which each character receives equal screen time and dramatic weight. This latter change is due at least in part to the fact that Kevin Hart, the 2014 film’s biggest star, plays Bernie rather than Danny. In the ’86 movie, the main story was the dramatic relationship between Danny (Rob Lowe) and Debbie (Demi Moore). Bernie (James Belushi) mostly provided comic relief, and Joan (Elizabeth Perkins) was mainly a cynically comical stick in the mud. In the new About Last Night, by contrast, Bernie and Joan's relationship is much more interesting than the fairly bland romance between the leads. While Michael Ealy and Joy Bryant are as attractive and likable as Lowe and Moore, it is Hart and Regina Hall who make the reboot worth seeing. Their ostensibly supporting characters have an unorthodox approach to life, love, sex, and companionship, and bringing them to the forefront gives the film contemporary relevance, spice, and humor.

Unfortunately, Pink, who also directed Hot Tub Time Machine and co-wrote and co-produced Grosse Pointe Blank and High Fidelity, demonstrates little mastery of comedy or film craft. The film is generically photographed and appallingly edited. Pink rushes too quickly from beat to beat for important scenes to breathe or for lines of serious dialogue to land with any resonance. The film only stays put when Hart and Hall are fighting or going off on a rant, but since they deliver these exchanges and monologues at similarly breakneck speeds, the overall effect is of a movie trying to wrap itself up as quickly as possible so the couples in the audience can leave the theater and get on with the rest of their evenings. That quirk doesn’t necessarily make for a bad date-night movie, but I wish the rest of this picture received a little more care from its creators. Still, About Last Night fulfills its potential as that rarest of Hollywood commodities: a worthy remake.