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Overnight, The (AF)

8/10

Stars: Adam Scott, Taylor Schilling, Jason Schwartzman, Judith Godreche, RJ Hermes, Max Moritt, Susan Traylor.

Director: Patrick Brice

Three cheers for writer-director Patrick Brice.

He’s made a sex movie that’s, for once, is actually (a) funny (b) not embarrassing to watch and (c) one you can safely go and see at the cinema without needing to wear a disguise.

The opening sequence – Scott and Schilling indulge in strenuous sex, segue into masturbation and then are interrupted by the arrival of their young son tin the bedroom– sets the sexual-comic tone without being pornographic.

The couple, newly arrived from Seattle to live in an apparently sanitized by Spielberg-style Los Angeles suburb, are with their son at a playground when they meet up with seriously friendly Schwartzman who invites them over for a meal that evening.

When they arrive at Schwartzman’s luxury home, Scott smartly removes the label from the $2 bottle of wine he brings as a gift and passes it off as coming from a friend’s winery.

He’s rewarded with a drink of what turns out to be filtered sewage passed off as water treated by Schwartzman’s new process and, after he telling “We’re movie buff” and his French wife Judith Godrèche is an actress, he screens her greatest role – a commercial that sees having her breasts massaged by a gizmo to make them larger.

The evening turns even more amusingly bluer when, with the two families’ sons soothed into a sleepover by Schwartzman’s piano playing, alcohol and marijuana (“You guys smoke pot, right?” asks their host as he brings in a bong), they dance, drink, skinny dip and discuss respective (credited as prosthetic, should you need to know) penis lengths…

The film sounds dirtier in synopsis than on the screen.

Witty dialogue and direction to match rouses laughs rather than carnal arousal. The four central performances, too, are spot on. On reflection, it may be seen more of a sharply observed sketch than a plotted narrative but that said, it’s a highly enjoyable comedy of embarrassment.

Alan Frank

USA 2015. UK Distributor: Metrodome (Universal). Colour.
79 minutes. Not widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 3, Violence/Horror 0, Drugs 3, Swearing 2.

Review date: 24 Jun 2015