About Last Night

Directed by Steve Pink

(R)

***

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I finally understand Kevin Hart’s appeal, said Ann Hornaday in The Washington Post. In this remake of a Brat Pack romance from 1986, Hart and Regina Hall play the lead couple’s “caustic, profane” best friends, and they not only “steal the movie whenever they’re onscreen” but also “grow funnier as the movie wears on.” Unfortunately, Hart and Hall are trapped in a hopelessly generic tale about the travails of a prettier, more conventional couple, said Ty Burr in The Boston Globe. Michael Ealy and Joy Bryant both seem nice enough, but the love story they bring to the screen comes across as “the visual equivalent of Muzak.” Think of Hart and Hall as the stars, though, and About Last Night starts to look like a smart critique of romances that follow rote paths, said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. “Watching the two of them hurl insults at each other is like witnessing verbal Muay Thai.” What’s more, when the two on-again, off-again lovers later congratulate each other on their honesty and dismiss their friends as comparatively stupid, “it’s only funny because it’s true.”