Overnight (2012)

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Most of the activity of the film is on a red eye flight direct from Los Angeles to New York City on Valentine's Day. Tully, the pilot, has anger management issues. Many of the passengers have problems finding successful romantic relationships.Jenny and Chip have a dinner before she flies back to New York. He gives her some expensive earrings, though her ears are not pierced. She tells him that she has decided to move to Los Angeles to be with him. Unfortunately, he has a second string girl friend and does not want Jenny to move. They break up. No surprises there.Tom, a theoretical physics professor, gets hooked into accepting a ride to LAX with his ex, who breaks up with him again, for not kissing her on the lips. Tom and Jenny bump into each other at on of the gift shops.TMJ (a rapper) is going to NYC without his entourage. While he is walking to his gate, rap music plays, in which the singer shows his sense of entitlement--to murder whomever he wishes. This was a good place to stop watching the film. Hate speak usually does not bode well for a film. Amir and Mohammed are both 'randomly' chosen for a more thorough inspection before boarding.On the plane, the flight attendants Sandy and Lisa immediately classify Jenny as a high maintenance bitch. Great: more hate speech. Amir and Mohammed are immediately pigeon-holed as terrorists. TMJ immediately shies away from Tom because he's white, while Tom is not positively impressed with TMJ's "I'm the most garish pimp here" clothing. The male flight attendant has trouble getting TMJ to get off his cell phone during take-off. After learning that TMJ was on board, Sandy and Lisa sing part of one of his songs which was beyond gross.Tom tries to enable a seat switch between Jenny (in coach) and TMJ, so that TMJ can appear non-elitist to his girl friend. TMJ objects to sitting next to the terrorists, but Tom talks him into it. Tom and Jenny try to get to know each other at some length.Tully and his wife have an off and on telephone fight during most of the flight. In between those heated exchanges, Tully and his co-pilot discuss the merits of Christianity. Tully is an atheist, while Derek is an evangelical.Amir turns out to be allergic to TMJ's dog. Mohammed tries to talk TMJ into putting the dog back in its carrier. The dog makes a break for it.Will any of these earnest attempts at relationships work out?------Scores-------Cinematography: 7/10 Competent but nothing special.Sound: 7/10 No particular problems on sound qualities. The choice of the incidental music could have been better.Acting: 3/10 Rachel Blanchard, Christina Chang, Claudia Christian, Josh Braaten, and Gbenga Akinnagbe were considerably more irritating than interesting. Anthony LePaglia and James D'Arcy were better than competent, but could not make up for the others.Screenplay: 3/10 The singing did not help, nor did the touchy-feely conversations, nor did the ugly yapping dog loose on a plane. I am not looking forward to other efforts by Valerie Breiman. Belly laughs? Zero. Smiles? Zero. Anything in between? No. The endless weepy confessions by men were neither illustrative nor interesting.

I wanted to like this movie, but I found the two lead characters overacting their parts horribly and thus they seemed stupid. Let's face facts, nobody with that much need and who is that vulnerable should fly on a red eye flight and risk having a dialog with anyone. Just sleep for heaven's sake and go see your therapist in the morning. I found the character of the guy who has the dog offensive - what kind of a woman dates a guy like that? What kind of a writer writes a part like that? Who on earth would have even bothered to put this storyline to any movie? I did enjoy the dialog between the pilot and the co-pilot and enjoyed those actors, particularly the pilot. Although I love romantic comedies, I did not find this romantic or comical. Just a waste of time.

The previous review does a pretty decent job of describing the overall movie. This review is just about the portrayal of the Christian character in this movie:But this is no 'Christian movie'. It has an R rating because of sexual themes and language. In most Hollywood movies, the Christian character, is usually trivialized as an obnoxious caricature of a either a Bible-thumping Preacher, or a pathetic wimp. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that the co-pilot Christian was, in the end, not portrayed that way. He started out seeming pretty nerdy and out-of-touch by reading his 'Holy Bible' in the cockpit. But the character became a real person as the movie progressed. And he even read a nice passage about love from 1 Cor. 13. I was very surprised that the Bible got such decent air time, for once. Good job Valerie!

"Overnight" starts as a typical romantic comedy but then ventures into a comedic romance, where comedy comes first. The romantic elements all seem to be part of the joke. Jenny (Rachel Blanchard) and Tom (James D'Arcy) meet in LAX fresh from disastrous break-ups (although it was over a year ago for Tom) and are both way too flighty and maladjusted to know how to seek self-comfort.Then we meet a handful of mostly equally maladjusted passengers all on the red eye from Los Angeles to New York. These supporting characters are played by a range of hard-working talented actors to hard-working established, well-respected actors, to struggling up-and-comers. Two overly-bitter flight attendants were supposed to provide the comedy at the beginning, but it wasn't clear why we needed to endure such despicable people and worse writing.Shortly thereafter, we were introduced to simple, but effective, "random" airport screening selections, and a famous rapper trying to figure out how normal people fly. This unconventional trio surprisingly added the best moments of comedy and the best characterizations.Our lead couple of two attractive thirty-somethings go from strangers to puppy love surrenderers to an argumentative married couple to hurtful divorcees all in the length of the plane ride. While it was vaguely amusing, there are 30-second commercials which do it better.Last but not least the pilot and co-pilot get into philosophical discussions on marriage, sex and God versus atheism. Don't sell it short since the pilot is played by Anthony LaPaglia after all. 2012 has also seen an odd trend where the male protagonist in romantic indies has a need, desire and ability to explain love and the universe in physics terms. Here, Tom was a physics teacher and it wasn't nearly as bad as previous films but not the best either (see The Diary of Preston Plummer for that)."Overnight" is light, sweet and funny enough to work as a romantic comedy. And if you want it to work on another level, it even takes the characters on a surprising and fairly satisfactory journey of self-discovery. (You'll just need to turn it off three minutes early if you want their trajectory to be physically sound).