HARD DAY'S NIGHT

Now playing:

One Night Only--Based only on the title and the poster, audiences may not go in expecting dystopian sci-fi. I didn't. But the premise of this romantic comedy is, quite exactly, The Purge, except with sex instead of violence.

Up front we are told that three years before the movie started, "The Mandate" outlawed premarital sex in America except for a single 12-hour period in summer. There's some amusingly interwoven exposition to explain how this is enforced, and some clever background gags in the signage or on TV, but the plausibility or implications of this liebesverbot aren't the point.

The movie is really about our heroine Allie (Monica Barbaro) and our hero Owen (Callum Turner) getting together and realizing they're meant for each other before the time is up. He's a pizza chef; she's a singer who makes her living with embarrassing jingles for pharmaceutical commercials but can't bring herself to deploy her pipes onstage in front an audience.

Dateless on the big day, they wander the lust-saturated streets of New York, crossing and re-crossing each other's paths while chasing after false leads and suffering wacky humiliations. Directed by Will Gluck of Easy A from a script by Travis Braun, One Night Only starts off excellently, with ingenious set-ups and a nice big ensemble of character players--Maya Hawke, Molly Ringwald and Levar Burton, to name only three--along with some surprise cameos.

The movie gets messier and less assured in its overextended third act, as if Gluck and Braun felt obligated to pile on unnecessary complications. By the end, the night feels way too long. But a movie like this fails or succeeds on the degree to which we like the leads and want to see them find each other. Turner and Barbaro's relationship progresses to the next station of fond, amused familiarity each time they meet, so that even when they're presented with glamorous alternatives, it's believable that they would opt for each other.

Turner is winning in his nice guy role; he has a touch of Channing Tatum's sweetness while giving off a sharper sense of intelligence. But One Night Only truly serves as a showcase for Barbaro, the striking young actress who played Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown. Maintaining her dignity here in a precariously revealing dress, with smiles and quiet chuckles escaping onto her face despite the travails she's facing, she gives us a romantic heroine we can wholeheartedly root for.

WITCH HITTER

Opening this weekend:

The Last Witch Hunter—Kaulder (Vin Diesel) a centuries-old warrior with miraculous regenerative powers, is the title character, enforcer of the uneasy secret truce between witches and humans. His liaison, a priest (Michael Caine) is placed under a death-like curse by witches seeking to revive their long-dormant Queen. With Caine’s priestly protégé (Elijah Wood) and a sympathetic young witch-woman (Rose Leslie) at his side, Kaulder stalks New York trying to prevent this, and to bring the old padre back to life.

I’m a sucker for this sort of nonsense, plus I’ve always liked Vin Diesel, so if this was going to work for anybody, I’d probably be a good bet. But this movie tried my patience. Despite—or maybe because of—the impressive wall-to-wall special effects, the movie generates little suspense or sense of awe. The actors, while too veteran not to be proficient, can’t find a way to make us invest in the characters.

The whole affair is reminiscent—too reminiscent—of earlier movies like Highlander and Blade. But with NYC as the backdrop to a story of the return of an ancient evil goddess, The Last Witch Hunter really came across to me like a less compelling version of Ghostbusters—it’s Ghostbusters without Bill Murray or the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. That’s not to say it’s without comedy, but most of its comedy is unintentional.

Jem and the Holograms—This one is based on a syndicated Hasbro/Marvel TV cartoon from the mid-‘80s. As far as I can remember, I never heard of it before I started hearing about this movie. In the cartoon, the heroine, Jerrica, was a rock star behind a holographic persona projected from her earrings. In this live-action adaptation, Jerrica (Aubrey Peeples) just hides behind a pink wig and shades to front a glam-pop quartet rounded out by her sister (Stefanie Scott) and two foster sisters (Aurora Perrineau and Hayley Kiyoko). The girls live with their kindly Aunt (Molly Ringwald), and the band’s mascot is a cute little bleepy-bloopy robot, Synergy, a legacy from Jerrica's late inventor father. The villainess is a record exec (Juliette Lewis) who is trying to separate Jem from her sisters.

Apparently the cartoon was a big deal to some girls back in its time, but it’s hard to imagine this slack, scattered movie having the same meaning for girls today. The young actresses are sweet, and the director, John M. Chu, shows some ingenuity is staging the numbers. A couple of the songs are quite catchy of their kind. But there aren’t enough of them. Bafflingly, this movie forgoes music in favor of more meandering complications to the silly plot, interminable narration and meaningless feel-good bromides about believing in yourself and following your dreams.

The movie also intercuts many of the big scenes with homemade online video clips—musicians performing, or Jem fans expressing their love. It’s an interesting idea, and while it doesn’t really work—it doesn’t add drive or momentum to the scenes—it should be said that the people in these videos are, on the whole, more interesting than the slick, artificial movie to which we keep going back. Jem’s characters aren’t much more substantial than holograms, and there’s something irksome about the free ride the movie takes on the real human beings in those videos.