Alex, Emily, and their son, RJ, have recently moved to Los Angeles’ Eastside from Seattle. Feeling lost in a new city, they are desperate to find their first new friends. After a chance meeting with Kurt at the neighborhood park, they gladly agree to join family pizza night at the home. But as it gets later and the kids go to bed, the family “playdate” becomes increasingly more revealing and bizarre as the couples begin to open up.
I vaguely remembered this trailer from a while back and recently stumbled across this movie on Netflix. Heck, I was in the middle of waiting for my TV shows to return and figured ‘why not?’ Let me tell you about this movie…
First off: OMG this movie is awkward. Not in a niche Napoleon Dynamite way, mind you, but rather in a way that makes this an impossibly possible date movie. The premise is that a couple makes friends with another couple and decides to do a dinner date as friend. Innocent, right? Things seem great as the new couple friends are exactly what are needed to keep the relationship going well and not at all confrontational, right? Things start off innocently enough with each couples’ kids becoming fast friends and being put to bed and letting the adults break out the wine until… well… Let’s just say things aren’t as innocent as they seem.
There is nudity in this movie. A good amount of nudity. Male and female alike and this movie achieved the impossible goal of making nudity and genitalia even more awkward and uncomfortable to watch than it possibly should be for a non NC-17 movie. Whether this is a positive or negative is up to you but I found it distracting as hell, but part of me feels like that was the intended reaction. I really didn’t like this part and as a red blooded male American I feel ashamed to admit that.
Adam Scott pulls off the best Aston Kutcher impersonation ever. I seriously did multiple double takes throughout the movie, and wiki’d, to confirm that he was not actually Kutcher. Overall I thought the acting was pretty spot on with everyone giving some authentic reactions to some really creative scenarios. I don’t remember a performance that bothered me or took me out of the movie but it’s hard to focus on that when the story was so…
This story is boring. I guess it started off well enough trying to dissect how couples try to revitalize a stale relationship but the weird twists and turns in this movie really didn’t have the desired affect. I just hated this movie. It may attract others but it’s not for me at all. I was completely uncomfortable throughout the movie and didn’t really enjoy myself and often found myself checking how far along I was in the movie to reach the end. The performances were fine, the scenery and music was ok, I just didn’t like the concept of the film. At all. I could see how people could relate to the subject matter but I think they would find more entertainment watching the Aziz Ansari Netflix show “Master of None”.
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Acting - 7/10
7/10
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Cinematography - 6/10
6/10
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Plot/Screenplay - 2/10
2/10
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Setting/Theme - 2/10
2/10
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Buyability - 2/10
2/10
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Recyclability - 1/10
1/10