Moving to a new city is always a tough thing to do. Everything is new, and you feel lost as you try to find those things that make your life livable. If the feeling of being out of place isn’t enough, you have to find new friends as well, and we all know how easy it is as adults to find those. When you are young it is easy, all you need is a bag of gummy worms and you are the most popular kind in school, but when you try that as an adult the reaction is not quite the same. The film “The Overnight” looks at a couple, which with their son have moved to sunny Las Angeles, looking that friend
Alex (Adam Scott) and Emily (Taylor Schilling) are the new couple in town. Emily has gotten a new job and brought the family with her, and with their arrival in their new house they begin a new chapter in their lives. Everyone knows a good chapter in the book of life includes friends, and Alex and Emily lack those in their new life in a new city. That changes when their son befriends another lad, and Alex starts a conversation with that boy’s father, Kurt (Jason Schwartzman), a overly friendly guy. Kurt, who wants to welcome Alex and his family to the neighborhood, invites the whole clan to pizza night, so that he can help tell them what schools to pick and so forth. Once at Kurt’s, Alex and Emily meet Kurt’s wife Charlotte (Judith Godreche) and after a fun family dinner, Kurt suggests they put the kids to bed, and continue the evening. Once the kids are asleep, the evening takes a turn on a road where anything can and will happen.
When moving somewhere and everyone is a stranger, it is easy to gravitate to someone who is so welcoming. “The Overnight” explores that, but dips more into where the night can take you more then the mysteries of a new place. The good thing is they have the perfect cast to take us on that ride of the unexpected. While the cast is a dream, the comfort you feel for the first part if the movie, dips into awkwardness that is can never recover from. It is easy to see what writer and director Patrick Brice was trying to do, but what starts off as pushing the envelope, goes to making you feel uncomfortable where it takes you. That might have been the plan, but it feels like that plan just didn’t come together. The cast is not wasted though, as the flaw in the story isn’t enough to wipe the shine off some fun performances. In the end “The Overnight” starts us down a fun road, only to lose it’s way along the way, to a place not many of us would ever want to be in, which makes the movie not as good as it could have been.
Brian Taylor
