It’s not easy making friends as adults — and in a new city, to boot.
“Am I supposed to just ask other grown-ups if they want to be friends?” Alex (Adam Scott) asks his wife, Emily (Taylor Schilling) in “The Overnight.” The couple and their preschool-age son have just moved from Seattle to Los Angeles and they are living amid a welter of boxes.
Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Adam Scott, Taylor Schilling, Judith Godreche.
Rating: R for strong sexuality, graphic nudity, language and drug use.
A trip to a nearby park, however, finds a playmate for the boy and potential friends for the adults. Kurt (Jason Schwartzman) calls himself the unofficial mayor of the area and offers help with applications for schools for the newcomers’ son. He invites the family to join him, his wife (Judith Godreche) and their child on their regular pizza night.
The transplants figure the best case scenario is they make new pals and the worst, they have a boring night and go home early. They don’t count on a third possibility, which starts with wine and pot and advances to skinny-dipping although Alex demurs, pleading “body issues.”
Let’s just say the makeup trailer must have been an interesting place on this set. No matter the trickery, it depicts full frontal male nudity, making the stripper scenes in “Magic Mike XXL” look positively demure by comparison.
Writer-director Patrick Brice’s movie, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this year, strives to be about marital ennui, parenthood, inhibitions and inadequacies. But it’s mainly a thin, one-note sex comedy that keeps audiences guessing about just how far into R-rated territory this film and friendship will swing.
Pun intended.
Movie editor Barbara Vancheri: bvancheri@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1632. Read her blog: www.post-gazette.com/madaboutmovies.
First Published: July 3, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
