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.

BUNNY BUSINESS

Hopping into theaters this weekend:

Could Beatrix Potter have imagined a movie adaptation of her Tale of Peter Rabbit with Eminem on the soundtrack?

No, I suppose she couldn't have. She died in 1943, after all, so she probably would have had a hard time imagining Eminem at all.

The question was rhetorical, anyway. That's what we've got, a new Peter Rabbit with CGI bunnies and other cute little creatures interacting with live-action human actors, engaging in broad slapstick and bickering family dynamics and slyly "meta" and "fourth wall" gags, all driven along by popular songs.

Even so, it's a little surprising how much of Potter's 1902 tale survives in this modern-dress version. Peter's siblings and cousin, the encouraging sparrows, Mr. McGregor (Sam Neill), the sieve, the flower pots in the shed, the blue jacket used as a scarecrow, even the grim backstory of Peter's father--these and other elements trace back to Potter's brief but effective heist thriller and juvenile delinquency drama.

But this story line can only take the movie so far. After that, director Will Gluck, who previously helmed the recent modern version of Annie, and his co-writer Rob Lieber concoct a deus ex machina for old man McGregor, then bring in his nephew (Domhnall Gleeson) and heir from London, a control-freak Harrod's employee. This guy goes to war with Peter and his pals as well, but must keep it secret from his neighbor Bea (Rose Byrne), a sweet painter who adores the rabbits.

Some of the battles which follow seem to owe almost as much to the Loony Tunes, if not to Peckinpah's Straw Dogs, as to Potter, and while at times they become a bit tediously repetitive, overall the film is visually deft and light-footed and enjoyably anarchic. Even so, some of the funniest passages are verbal rather than visual, throwaway gags like a store clerk's explanation of the human urge to anthropomorphize animals. The voice cast, led by James Corden as Peter--who also sings a pretty song over the end credits--includes Daisy Ridley, Margot Robbie, Elizabeth Debicki, Matt Lucas and Sia.

The kids in the audience with whom I saw this film seemed to find it hilarious, and on the whole I was pretty amused myself. I thought it struck a nice balance between edgy mischief and just the right degree of non-sappy warmth. If you remain unmoved by the sight of the rabbits apologizing by inclining their foreheads together, you're tougher than I am.

RAGGEDY ANNIE

Opening today:

Annie—There are plenty of missteps and false notes in this new version of the Broadway musical favorite, reset in modern-day New York. To begin with, the orphanage setting no longer works. The show’s comic villainess Miss Hannigan, here played by Cameron Diaz, is now a bitter, drunken foster mom, which somehow doesn’t have the same menace.

Many of the Martin Charnin lyrics had to be tweaked, while all of the ‘30s-specific numbers had to be dropped entirely, and to make up for this new numbers were added, all forgettable. The movie is badly overlong, needlessly padded with stuff like un-suspenseful chase scenes that add nothing.

On the upside, this Annie, directed by Will Gluck from a script he wrote with Aline Brosh McKenna, starts off well, with a lively opening and several of the show’s best numbers, including the peerless “Hard Knock Life.” Annie’s fellow orphans are spirited, and there are grown-ups who look like they’re going to be bit players but give full-fledged, funny supporting turns, notably Stephanie Kurtzuba as a dazzled social services inspector. The new Sandy, a rescue dog in real life, makes a fine debut as well.

Above all, Quvenzhané Wallis is adorable in the title role. She doesn’t have the brassy Broadway-baby belt usually associated with the part, but she has a sweet voice and she’s as indomitable and assured as she was in the role of Hushpuppy in Beasts of the Southern Wild. She also has a fine, candid onscreen rapport with Jamie Foxx as Oliver Stacks, this film’s standoffish, germaphobic version of Daddy Warbucks, and this carries the picture past its cheesier aspects.

There are a couple of cute in-jokes, too. A band playing in a club, for instance, is called the Leapin’ Lizards. Best of all, Stacks’ opponent in the New York mayoral race is a progressive incumbent named Harold Gray, after the creator of the original Little Orphan Annie newspaper strip. There’s a special piquancy to this gag if you know the truth about Gray: that he was a Union-hating, New Deal-loathing reactionary, and that he—of all freakin’ people—was a staunch opponent of Child Labor Laws! Apparently he believed there were benefits to a hard knock life.