Ding meets dong in lovably weird The Overnight

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      Starring Adam Scott and Taylor Schilling. Rated 14A.

      It’s been a long, hard-fought battle, but the fundamentalist sex-haters and bitter closet cases appear to be staggering off the field, if not quite lying down in defeat. Arriving in the same week, Magic Mike XXL and this fresh flick make sex-positive statements that will surely have Church Ladies running for cover.

      The Overnight centres on a Seattle couple with their small son, new to L.A. and ready to question their way of living. We know from the start that Alex and Emily (Adam Scott and Orange Is the New Black’s Taylor Schilling) have some blockage in the bedroom department. This comes into play when they meet a more adventurous twosome—on a playground, no less—and get invited to the intimate party of the title.

      We don’t know how Kurt (Jason Schwartzman), French wife Charlotte (Ridicule’s Judith Godrèche), and their son got their wonderland of a gated villa, but these artsy eccentrics certainly have the swagger of entitlement. When the kids crash early, our alleged grownups get into some serious partying and there’s an increasing sense that Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice might have been the previous owners.

      Writer-director Patrick Brice’s last film, a comic thriller called Creep, also featured a voyeuristic protagonist in over his head in an isolated setting. Here, in another effort produced by mumblecore veteran Mark Duplass, the horror comes during a midnight skinny-dipping scene, when Alex compares his “middle-school dick” to Kurt’s “horse cock”—thanks to the most outrageous prosthetics since Boogie Nights.

      Ultimately, the perfectly cast movie grabs for comic beats instead of ratcheting up the heat or going deeper into the class-conflict subtext, underscored by the physical similarity of the two couples. Still, it’s full of stuff you never see on-screen. (When the newbies ask Charlotte about her acting career, they’re treated to footage of her demonstrating a breast pump.)

      This Overnight excursion packs a lot of kinky fun into less than 80 minutes and, in the end, attaches no judgment to what has transpired. That alone is enough to make overstuffed heads explode.

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