'THE OVERNIGHT': Four Stars (Out of Five)

Raunchy sex comedy flick, written and directed by indie filmmaker Patrick Brice. It stars Adam Scott, Taylor Schilling, Jason Schwartzman and Judith Godreche; as two sets of parents, one conservative and one unconventional, who meet for a playdate between their two sons, which leads to much more. It was produced by Mark Duplass, Jay Duplass, Adam Scott and Naomi Scott; on a budget of just $200,000. I found it to be odd, disturbing and very funny.

Alex (Scott) and Emily (Schilling) just moved to Los Angeles, with their young son RJ (R.J. Hermes). They meet Kurt (Schwartzman),and his son Max (Max Moritt),at a park; and Kurt invites them over for a family playdate. Alex and Emily accept the invitation, and they meet Kurt's wife, Charlotte (Godreche),upon arrival. Things go from strange, to crazy, after the two kids fall asleep.

The movie is quirky, and hilariously funny, in places. Most of the time it's extremely uncomfortable, and disturbing, as well; watching these characters have these extremely awkward and bizarre encounters. That's what's so good about the movie though, even more so than it's witty humor, is just it's insightful (and extremely odd) look, at human nature. The movie is definitely worth seeing just for that.

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Alex (Adam Scott) and Emily (Taylor Schilling) move to L.A. with their son R.J. One day at the park, R.J. befriends Max. Max's father Kurt (Jason Schwartzman) invites them over for a visit. The adults spend time together that night and strange things start bubbling up. Kurt has a hobby of painting butt-holes. Charlotte (Judith Godrèche) acts in milk-pumping videos. Kurt goes skinny dipping and he's revealed to have a giant dick. Alex is immediately taken back with insecurity about his micro dick.

I wouldn't call it funny. It's a little uncomfortable but mostly endearingly weird. I get a feeling that Scott and Schwartzman should be a lot more wacky or a lot more awkward. The movie sets up a lot of weirdness but it's a little too nice about it. The naked dancing is great. It's also a little short which gives off a feeling of a need for more material.

If I were to look really deep at The Overnight I think I would both find not a whole lot there and yet a lot there at the same time. This might not make much sense, but Patrick Brice has a fairly thin narrative at heart - a couple gets invited over for dinner and drinks and to uh hang out at a new friendly couple's place (they've just moved to California so there's some culture clash at the least) and hi-jinks ensue of course but in the 'lewd' sense) - and yet it's also a movie about masculinity and what it means to have power over someone in sexual situations and in bed in general.

The Adam Scott character Alex, as the prime example, is a little concerned about the size of his you-know-what, and it's not in a way of making a running joke about it (Howard Stern used to do that a lot),but in a terrified/petrified sort of way that gets emphasized, so to speak, when Schwartzman's character Kurt shows his as there's a skinny dipping scene (it's basically like a Dirk Diggler moment). How does he get the courage to show it? Well, somehow, through some uh male encouragement he does, and then that becomes a thing not so much for Alex but for Emily (Taylor Schilling),like, what is he trying to prove here? What's going to happen from here, such as a swinging thing?

There's some explicit territory here, but the key thing is that it's a sex comedy and that a lot of the sex is messy and awkward and because of that it's funnier. Kurt's wife (a French actress I'm not familiar with but is quite good here, Godreche) does the 'dabbling' in massages, and of course when she finally shows what she does to Emily it's the naughty kind. This is somewhat predictable, but it's still revealed and shot in a way that is meant to be genuinely shocking for Emily, and for us as well. By this point in the movie it feels like there shouldn't be much else to shock us but there is more, and I wouldn't want to reveal it even in a spoilery-review.

Suffice it to say the movie is funny, and at times it's very funny. It may be sort of soft targets - the hipster elite in California where the guy is an 'artist' who draws, yes, assholes, literally, and there's the way that Schwartzman plays this guy that is kind of like what might've happened to one of his Wes Anderson characters (i.e. Max in Rushmore) if he somehow got to California and specialty internet porn and married a French woman. So it's both awkward and in its way quirky, but also dark, which is what I might've responded to the most. The fact that the movie isn't afraid to go 'there' or wherever the hell the next 'there' might be is exciting and unpredictable. If nothing else he's the reason to see the movie, but across the board the four main actors are excellent (Scott is filling a role it feels like he's played before in stuff like Friends with Kids, the nice guy with issues, but he can pull it off, and Schilling is... Schilling, Piper from OitNB).

It functions more like an expanded short film, it has a closer scope and feel to that, but the characters were well drawn out, it knows how to pace itself so there's some space in-between the comedy to get to know these people and develop relationships over one night, and the climax is just about the uproariously funny thing you'll see in any movie, spot-perfect-awesome timing that is also a callback to something earlier in the film. It's an engaging, funny movie about sexual politics, and though it seems a little thin on the surface (the Duplass brothers produced and it's really a film they'd make, though it's directed by someone else),it's got a lot to say while seeming like it's not saying much, if that makes sense.