The Overnight

Adam Scott and Taylor Schilling have just moved to California. They have a toddler son. Scott is concerned, since he's a stay-at-home dad, that they'll have trouble making friends and he'll be lonely. One day at the park they meet Jason Schwartzmann, who seems like a great guy, even if he is wearing a hipster's hat. He invites the whole family over for pizza night, and they meet his charming French wife, Judith Godreche.

This is the opening of The Overnight, a comedy written and directed by Patrick Brice, and released in 2015. I'm having trouble getting a fix on what I think of it. It is funny in parts, if not laugh out loud funny, but it's raison d'etre, to be sexually shocking, seems almost quaint. If it wanted to be the Bob & Ted & Carol & Alice of the decade it's about thirty years too late.

The set up of the film is that the strait-laced Scott, who has issues about his small penis, and Schilling, who has never had another man than Scott, are uptight while Schwartzman and Godriche are free. She makes demonstration videos for breast pumps. He makes giant paintings of assholes (literally). They are like the ego meeting the id. And though this film has a short running time, we wait for the other shoe to drop, like secretly this wild and free couple are cannibals or something. But no, when the other shoe drops, it lands with the weight of a ballet slipper.

The Overnight is like porn for people who have never seen porn. Interestingly, there is more male nudity than female, for those of you who wonder if Jason Schwartzmann is hung or not, the answer is yes. The script is cagey--at every point that the straight couple get suspicious, the other couple does something to reassure them. Although when Schilling goes on a liquor run with Godriche and she stops at a Thai massage parlor to give a random stranger a handjob, you'd think Schilling would have had enough.

The cast is good, although Scott seems, with his role on Parks and Recreation, to have settled into the guy who always looks perplexed. I just wish this film had gone further out on a limb, instead of settling for the easy ending.