About Last Night...

About Last Night... is a warmhearted and intelligent love story, and one of the year's best movies. Read full review

One of the best American films of the year. [14 July 1986, p.69]

One of the most interesting, one of the most rewarding and one of the funniest films of the year. [4 July 1986]

Tender, marvelously well played (by almost everyone) and thoroughly engaging. When it comes to the current sexual skirmishes between men and women, screenwriters Tim Kazurinsky and Denise DeClue (Second City alumni) know every inch of enemy territory and take no prisoners. Read full review

Zwick gets the most out of his young cast, and you do believe that Lowe and Moore are drawn to each other against all good sense. Lowe offers the first sympathetic performance of his career. And Moore, her voice husky as burnt sugar, is sure to succeed Debra Winger as our fresh-scrubbed sex symbol. And to think that only last year, they were shallow brat-packers in "St. Elmo's Fire." [4 July 1986, p.N29]

This is the movie "St. Elmo's Fire" wanted to be and missed by a mile. Read full review

The core of honesty that distinguishes the production remains unchanged by time, ensuring that, no matter how many years have passed, About Last Night... still works on an emotional level. Read full review

First-time director Arnold Zwick does a fine job of capturing the vitality of the singles scene. [30 July 1986]

Film lacks much of Mamet's grittiness, but is likable in its own right. Read full review

Sex and swearing from David Mamet: the family guy. Fun for grown-ups only. Read full review

You've a right to wonder why anyone would want to work so hard - with such an expenditure of imagination - to transform a play with such a distinctive voice into a movie that sounds like any number of others. Read full review

The second leads are far more interesting: Belushi brings a brash, hearty presence to the film, while Perkins is wonderfully acerbic. Their scenes together are the movie's best. Read full review

As the envious, destructive best friends of the central couple, Jim Belushi and (especially) Elizabeth Perkins have the actor's know-how to fill in the gaps, but as the lovers, Rob Lowe and Demi Moore are hopelessly pallid. Read full review

The screenwriters work many nice little observations into their occasionally over-quippish script, but this is considerably smaller than the sum of its parts: it gets the detail, but misses the big picture. Read full review

Moore's Debbie is earnest but uninteresting, which is a problem when she is playing half of the movie's focal couple. [2 July 1986, p.D10]

The movie is adapted from David Mamet's play, "Sexual Perversity in Chicago," but it bears little relation to it -- screen writers Tim Kazurinsky and Denise DeClue nod to Mamet's structure, appropriate a couple of monologues and take off on their own. They and the director, Ed Zwick, could have done a better job of opening the play up -- outside life rarely intrudes on this foursome, as it needn't in the theater, but must in movies. [2 July 1986, p.D1]

The screenwriters retain much of Mamet's dialogue, but they piece it out, and the director punches up the breaks between scenes with rock music. It's like being pounded on the back every two minutes when your back is already sore (because the dialogue has been whacking you so hard).