Hey gang, Valkor here. Although I’ve just started swimming through
my backlog of films, from what I can see this is starting to turn
out to be another “30 in 30”… though I doubt it’ll get that far.
Then again I wouldn’t be mad if it did, so long as the next batch
is as good as this next film up on deck – Night Owls. About midway,
I didn’t think I’d like it… but when it was over… yea.
Night owls puts the focus on Kevin (Adam Pally), who scores a drunken hook up with “hotty with a body” Madeline aka Maddie (Rosa Salazar), at a party for the local college team where Kevin works (they don't know each other's names at this point). She takes him to her gorgeous home and the two have one hot and steamy night. When Kevin wakes up, Maddie is missing and after a quick snoop it’s revealed that he's actually in his boss's home. Worse, he finds Maddie passed out on the bathroom floor, overdosed on an unknown drug, which we later learn is Xanax. After speaking with his colleague Peter (Rob Huebel), Kevin learns that Maddie is his boss's mistress and he has to keep her awake until he arrives to straighten things out. Things start out rocky for the two, with a lot of slapping and hitting, but eventually they find their groove, begin to learn more about one another and it looks like things could get... “Interesting” between the two. That is until Kevin's boss Will (Peter Krause) enters the picture. And now Maddie has to choose: continue being the mistress or start something fresh with the unattached new guy.
Here's the deal; I'm used to films like Castaway, Brake or Buried where we deal with one guy at one location and they have to carry the film all the way through to the end. But Night Owls sticks two actors in one location for the entire film, leaving us the viewers, to watch their back and forth for almost the entire 90 minutes. Is this something you'd want to invest your time?
The Good:
I'd say that's a definite yes. I didn’t think I’d like it but I found Night Owls to be highly entertaining; it was an absolute treat and a refreshing departure from the typical romantic comedies I'm used to – this is a film that centers on two people, one night, lots of hitting (though it could have used a little bit more) with loads of heart and laughs. When I realized that we'd never leave the house and I'd have to sit through these two going at it, I wasn't sure I'd like it. But as the film progressed, I was absorbed with Kevin and Maddie’s plight and stuck around out of curiosity to see how it ends. And how it ends... well I was pleased with it and I couldn’t have seen it end any other way. Now if you’re gonna create a 90 minute film about two people stuck in one place, they better have damn good chemistry, which Adam Pally and Rosa Salazar have loads of it as they express their point of views, get some things off their chest and coming to a conclusion one would hope for. And let me just say, Rosa Salazar is the epitome of “PerfectView”, with a pair of the most gorgeous eyes I’ve ever seen (along with a gorgeous everything else... ahem). In the end, Night Owls is a total comedic win and I’m glad I took the time to check it out.
The Bad:
N/A
Night Owls is doing the limited theatrical run, but you can also check it on Video On Demand (VOD - Amazon Instant, Google Play, etc); and quite honestly it’s one film that you shouldn’t pass up; it has its share of laughs but mostly it’s all heart that I highly recommend. And out of TOV 5 stars, I’m giving Night Owls a 4.5
