Tonight Is The Night Movie

Having earned countless millions of dollars for Blumhouse Productions and Universal Pictures with "The Purge" and its sequels, writer/director James DeMonaco has been given the gamble to make a film that is presumably closer to him on a personal level and which does not center on people being torn apart like fresh bread. The just problem is that the resulting movie, "This is the Night," is such a spectacular misfire on every imaginable level—and fifty-fifty some you oasis't begun to imagine—that at that place are times when one might mistake it for an particularly clever and relentlessly deadpan satire of the type of pic it's desperately trying to evoke. If that had been the case, it might accept become some kind of masterpiece. Alas, it is relentlessly sincere throughout and that somehow simply makes an already terrible moving picture fifty-fifty worse.

The moving-picture show takes place on May 28, 1982, a engagement you will all no doubt recognize as being only ane calendar week earlier the opening of the monumental "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan." It turns out that it was also the opening mean solar day of "Rocky Iii," the Sylvester Stallone-directed sequel to his 1976 Oscar-winning striking about a palooka boxer who unexpectedly gets a shot at the heavyweight title. Now I am old enough to have actually seen "Rocky III" on its opening weekend and while the crowds certainly came out, I don't remember anyone beingness demonstrably fanatic virtually it. Evidently that was not the instance in the Staten Isle neighborhood where this film is set up, where information technology is depicted equally an outcome which sends practically the entire town to the local theatre to catch the show in an act of nigh-religious devotion. I dunno—mayhap those of united states in the Midwest were a trivial more reserved back then, or we instinctively knew to hold the displays of over-the-height devotion for some other calendar month in society to herald the debut of "Megaforce."

Just I digress. Anyway, "This is the Night" is centered on the Dedea family, all of whom have their ain personal problems to bear. Youngest son Anthony (Lucius Howard) is an awkward 16-year-old who wants to wish his non-so-underground trounce Sophia (Madelyn Cline) a Happy Birthday and confess his feelings for her at her political party later that night. His begetter, Vincent (Frank Grillo) runs the financially struggling feast hall where the political party is happening and is about to lose it to local mobster Frank Larocca (Bobby Cannavale), who plans to torch the place for the insurance afterwards the political party, and also who happens to exist Sophia's begetter. Older brother Christian (Jonah Hauer-King) is secretly struggling with sexual identity bug and with the fact that he does not want to follow his father'southward wishes for him to go to trade school. Every bit for Mom, Marie (Naomi Watts), her cantankerous to bear is being the ane major female character in a guy-centric movie and therefore given zip of substance to do except fretting in the background.

And then anyhow, they all get to the flick together and they find themselves duly inspired past Rocky'south can-do spirit to go off and conquer their various troubles. For Anthony, this is more complicated because every bit the motion picture ends, Sophia's loutish boyfriend Santo (Steve Lipman) turns the entire town confronting him by loudly insulting Rocky Balboa—the most important hero of the fourth dimension, nosotros are told later on—and claiming that he said information technology. Every bit a result, Anthony and friends Dov (River Alexander) and Albie (Chase Vacnin) find themselves marked men as they endeavor to become to the party in 1 piece. (This unabridged plot thread is more suggestive of Walter Hill'south "The Warriors," one of any number of films you would be better served by watching instead of this.) For Vincent, he finally musters upwards the courage to confront Frank, who is still mad that Marie chose Vincent instead of him way back when. As for Christian and Marie, you volition have to see the pic to discover what happens with them, largely because you wouldn't believe me if I told you.

"This is the Night" conspicuously aspires to be something along the lines of the wonderful semi-autobiographical films that Barry Levinson made virtually growing upward in Baltimore in the Fifties and Sixties. Those films—"Diner" (1982), "Tin Men" (1987), "Avalon" (1990) and "Liberty Heights" (1999)—were wonderful because even if you lot never gear up foot in Maryland or did interesting things with a popcorn box, they even so worked; Levinson tapped into universal feelings and emotions that were easily recognizable no matter where you came from or when you did it. By comparing, everything in "This is the Nighttime" feels contrived and bogus, the cinematic equivalent of a bad theme restaurant. Not simply does none of it ever work, in that location are times when it seems as if every single scene is trying to be the most awkward and unbelievable of the agglomeration. Trust me, there are a lot of competitors for this particular booby prize.

Every bit for the ostensible hook, the "Rocky Iii" angle, it proves to exist one of the biggest miscalculations. Lord knows I can be guilty of venerating the detritus of my youth at times (yous don't call up I had to expect up those release dates for "Star Expedition 2" or "Megaforce," practice you?) but whatsoever importance Stallone's film may accept had on a young DeMonaco, it does not translate well here. If he used the film to thoughtfully explore why even the well-nigh meaningless aspects of popular culture (and face it, "Rocky III" falls into that category) can accept such a powerful concord on us, that might accept been interesting. Instead, DeMonaco presents the veneration as a given and with a zealousness that is cringe-inducing at times, especially since the lesson sometimes learned is that at that place's no trouble that can't be solved with a punch to the face.

Perhaps the best mode to properly illustrate the massive failings of "This is the Night" is to point you in the direction of a film that tries to do many of the same things that it does, only infinitely improve. That pic would be "Matinee," Joe Dante's wonderful, if sadly underseen, 1993 film about a Florida teenager dealing with everything from confessing his love to his longtime crush to looming fears of annihilation brought on by the unfolding Cuban Missile Crisis, and finding inspiration from a William Castle-style schlock film producer who has arrived to preview his latest effort, "Mant!" Smart, funny, and knowing, the film worked beautifully as both a coming-of-age story and as a dearest alphabetic character to the potency of popular civilisation without ever succumbing to empty nostalgia and tin be understood and embraced by anyone, regardless of whether they were around during the time information technology was set. By comparison, the only 18-carat feeling that "This is the Dark" will inspire in viewers is a fervent wish that the picture had simply ignored all of the yo-yos on brandish, and instead focused on those braver and wiser souls who chose to go to the town's other theater and see "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" instead.

Now playing in select theaters.