Catching Up on 2015: Josh Reviews The Overnight
In writer/director Patrick Brice’s bizarre 2015 comedy, The Overnight, Alex (Adam Scott) and Emily (Taylor Schilling) are a young couple who have just moved to LA. When Alex takes his & Emily’s young son to a local park, he starts chatting with another father, Kurt (Jason Schwartzman). Kurt quickly invites Alex and Emily to come to he and his wife Charlotte (Judith Godreche)’s house for dinner. Alex is somewhat put-off by Kurt’s forwardness but also excited at the idea of making a new friend, and so he accepts the invitation. But what he and Emily think will be a relatively short dinner turns into an all-night long experience that is the core of the movie’s story.
At this point, after Party Down and Parks and Rec, I will pretty much follow Adam Scott anywhere. I was intrigued by the cast of Mr. Scott along with Jason Schwartzman and Orange is the New Black‘s Taylor Schilling. And, indeed, the main pleasure of The Overnight is watching those the four main cast-members bounce off of one another. (I wasn’t familiar with Mr. Godreche before seeing this film, but she holds her own well with the other three.) The movie solely focuses on these four characters, and so all the actors get a lot to play with as their characters go through the wild events of the evening. Jason Schwartzman’s Kurt is particularly memorable, a new spin on the array of intelligent, eccentric weirdos that Mr. Schwartzman has made a career out of playing. Taylor Schilling plays a lot of the same notes here as she does in Orange is the New Black, but she’s clearly having fun in the role and she’s able to strike the right tone of skepticism and curiosity in Emily. But it is Adam Scott’s endearing, naturalistic work that holds the movie together, particularly when things start to get really crazy in the film’s second half. Alex’s character takes some off-kilter turns as the film progresses, but Mr. Scott is able to sell every moment and make it look easy.
There are some interesting character-arcs that run through The Overnight, and also some big laughs. But primarily, the comedy in the film is of the type based on extreme awkwardness. This is a film that you will watch through your hands covering your face at times, as the awkwardness builds to near-unbearable levels. Personally, this is not a style of comedy that speaks to me all that much. Your mileage may vary. There’s also some, um, prosthetic-enhanced male nudity in the later part of the film that shifts the movie over from comedy/farce into bizarre-indie territory. I think some people will enjoy the film’s frankness while others will just find it to be bewilderingly weird.
I was somewhere in between. I guess I enjoyed the film, although I found some of the extreme awkwardness to be almost physically painful. It was an interesting film to watch once but not one I ever expect to revisit.