About Last Night (Blu-ray)

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So many things in the Eighties seemed like a good idea at the time: big hair, big shoulder pads, and heavily-processed synthesizer music, to name a few. These days, so many people joke about the Decade of Bad Taste that when you run across a movie that depicts Eighties' style and culture you can't help but think, "oops, two strikes."

"About Last Night" gives you a full dose of the Eighties. The big hair is here, along with the big shoulder pads, the cheesy music, the bad pick-up lines, and some really cheesy sex scenes. I mean, am I the only guy on the planet who's never had a woman arch backwards like a gymnast when she's on top of me? Do people really do stuff like this?

And was that a little raunchy for a critic to say? Well get over it, because if you watch this film by Edward Zwick ("Glory," "Legends of the Fall") you get the full Monty AND the full raunch.

A 22-year-old Rob Lowe stars as Danny Martin, a Chicagoan who by day sells groceries for a Chicago wholesaler, on weekends plays Chicago-style softball (using a 16" Clincher ball and no gloves or mitts), and at night prowls the singles bar with his best friend, Bernie (James Belushi). Bernie, who provides most of the raunchiness, is probably the biggest pig on the bar scene, a guy who calls women "broads" and "babes" and thinks they exist just for the purpose of giving him a place to park his junk for the night. Speaking fluid "male pig," he brags loudly about his conquests and quizzes Danny about his. But the opening routine between the two of them is hilarious because it's rooted in the old "that's good"/"no, that's bad" vaudeville gags. As Bernie is telling Danny about his night, Danny intermittently interjects, "Was she a pro?" And always, (with perfect comic timing and inflection, I might add) Bernie says, "At this point, we don't know." Later, "Draw blood?" "At this point, no." If the rest of the film had dialogue that was just as funny and sharp, "About Last Night" would be a rollicking good satire on the singles scene. As is, the banter gets pretty tiresome, and all we learn about the singles scene is that you didn't want to be single in Chicago in the Eighties.

The main narrative begins when a group of young women picnicking and drinking at a lakefront park watch the ballplayers, and Debbie (a very young, 24-year-old Demi Moore) takes an interest in Danny, despite the objections of her cynical (and practical) roommate, Joan (Elizabeth Perkins, "Weeds")--and despite the fact that if Lowe were any skinnier, he could be a model for boys' underwear. When Debbie eyeballs him, Joan only raises her cynical eyebrows and says, "I refuse to go out with a man who's ass is smaller than mine."

Loosely based on David Mamet's play, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, "About Last Night" runs with the raunchiness and doesn't really get into the complications that language, verbal honesty and emotional lashing-out cause for the characters--which is probably why Mamet has disowned the film. So has the Chicago Park District, I imagine, for showing ballplayers with a keg of beer right there behind the backstop, when there are strictly enforced no-alcohol rules for city parks.

"What'd you do last night?"
"Went home and took some Lithium. How about you?"

Well, I watched a film that was most fascinating to me because it showed two very young stars, each of them prettier than the other. And this one-night stand turns into a sexual relationship, then a proposal to share an apartment. After that come the inevitable problems that result when two people who only know each other sexually try to cohabit, and the equally inevitable "start again" proposal. "About Last Night" features a less-endowed Moore before the breast augmentation she strutted in "Striptease" (1996). That's one of the first things you notice during a long lovemaking and walking-around-the-apartment-naked sequence. The second thing is the occasionally sharp exchange, which makes you think back to the opening routine and wonder why more of the screenplay by "Saturday Night Live" writer Tim Kazurinksy isn't wittier. He certainly had some solid material to work with. But the head really snaps when we do get a fun exchange, as when the morning after a one-night-stand the man asks, "What's for breakfast," and the woman responds, "Egg MacMuffin, corner of Broadway and Belmont." And the third thing you notice about this film is the incredibly large number of cheesy montages. This is a big montage movie, which, of course, goes along with the big hair, big shoulder pads, and big talk. You get the dating montage, the lovemaking montage, the moving montage, the "I'm alone but I hate you still" montage, and a montage for virtually every aspect of this film. And music by people like Sheena Easton, Paul Davis, Bob Seeger, and Jermaine Jackson doesn't help.