The screenplay is by Tim Kazurinsky and Denise DeClue. The film—About Last Night . . . (1986)—is based on David Mamet‘s play, Sexual Perversity in Chicago. I haven’t seen the play, but I know perfectly well that this is not it. It’s not Mamet on screen except, I assume, in the first sequence when Mamet-like language really flows.

The film is involving, even so. Director Ed Zwick, who released in 2010 a mediocre comedy-drama called Love and Other Drugs, fashioned a better comedy-drama with About Last Night. It stars a beautiful Demi Moore and a handsome Rob Lowe, both just fair as actors, and co-stars Jim Belushi, quite potent.

The theme seems to be the struggle, if it is even possible, to reach the highest, the utmost, in sexual love. For an hour and fifteen minutes, the movie is satisfactory, with gusto, then it turns unconvincing (for one thing, Dan [Lowe] agrees to kiss the strange woman at a party where his girlfriend Debbie [Moore] is). Before long, though, it becomes satisfactory again, even if Miles Goodman’s sensitive music has no place here. All in all, the film’s not bad.

The screenplay is by Tim Kazurinsky and Denise DeClue. The film—About Last Night . . . (1986)—is based on David Mamet‘s play, Sexual Perversity in Chicago. I haven’t seen the play, but I know perfectly well that this is not it. It’s not Mamet on screen except, I assume, in the first sequence when Mamet-like language really flows.

The film is involving, even so. Director Ed Zwick, who released in 2010 a mediocre comedy-drama called Love and Other Drugs, fashioned a better comedy-drama with About Last Night. It stars a beautiful Demi Moore and a handsome Rob Lowe, both just fair as actors, and co-stars Jim Belushi, quite potent.

The theme seems to be the struggle, if it is even possible, to reach the highest, the utmost, in sexual love. For an hour and fifteen minutes, the movie is satisfactory, with gusto, then it turns unconvincing (for one thing, Dan [Lowe] agrees to kiss the strange woman at a party where his girlfriend Debbie [Moore] is). Before long, though, it becomes satisfactory again, even if Miles Goodman’s sensitive music has no place here. All in all, the film’s not bad.

I have not been watching very many 2018, ’19 and ’20 movies because current flicks are so blasted familiar and dull and, of course, woke (and thus play it safe). (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is an exception.) I’m mostly sticking with films from the past. The 1974 California Split, by Robert Altman, is not a good movie—the situations it presents are absurd—but it isn’t uncomfortably familiar or dull or woke either. Revolving around two shallow gamblers, it doesn’t play it safe. The film is a mess, however.

It rambles on preposterously, with no character development. George Segal is in a dopey, underwritten role but his acting succeeds except in the drunk scenes. Elliott Gould is a grabber, appropriately zestful. Ann Prentiss is unreal and miscast, but such supporting players as Joseph Walsh (Sparkie) are fine. Gwen Welles, who died of cancer at 42, is pleasant. Occasionally California Split is vulgar. In a good scene in Altman’s Nashville, Miss Welles reveals her attractive buttocks. Here, Gould reveals (discreetly) his unattractive penis. Spare me.

I have not been watching very many 2018, ’19 and ’20 movies because current flicks are so blasted familiar and dull and, of course, woke (and thus play it safe). (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is an exception.) I’m mostly sticking with films from the past. The 1974 California Split, by Robert Altman, is not a good movie—the situations it presents are absurd—but it isn’t uncomfortably familiar or dull or woke either. Revolving around two shallow gamblers, it doesn’t play it safe. The film is a mess, however.

It rambles on preposterously, with no character development. George Segal is in a dopey, underwritten role but his acting succeeds except in the drunk scenes. Elliott Gould is a grabber, appropriately zestful. Ann Prentiss is unreal and miscast, but such supporting players as Joseph Walsh (Sparkie) are fine. Gwen Welles, who died of cancer at 42, is pleasant. Occasionally California Split is vulgar. In a good scene in Altman’s Nashville, Miss Welles reveals her attractive buttocks. Here, Gould reveals (discreetly) his unattractive penis. Spare me.