Rent Two Night Stand (2014)

Two Night Stand review by Michelle Sommerville - Cinema Paradiso

I hate to start a review off like this, but...don’t waste your time on this film. It lacks material, morals, talent, and hopefully will lack audience members.

The film centres around two people - Alec and Megan - who are young and spend one night together (doing you know what). What began as a one-night stand extends, as a blizzard traps them in Alec’s tiny apartment. With nothing else to do, the couple decide to try and give each other dating advice. How will it turn out? (Reviewer’s note: nobody cares).

To begin with, the acting was unremarkable. Miles Teller, who has been cast in more and more popular roles these last couple of years, plays the lead male role ‘Alec’. You can only assume he took this role without knowing the other films he would be in and get noticed for, otherwise I have no idea what he was thinking. He may be a drawing card to younger audiences, so I urge parents to be aware that this is not a film for them. Analeigh Tipton did well for it being her first leading role, but she definitely wouldn’t stand out from a crowd.

I am a huge fan of television show episodes or the occasion film that can pull-off a ‘bottle episode’. This is when a story takes place in a limited setting (one or two small locations), and allows the characters to progress the story. Yes this film had limited locations, however, these characters were incredibly horrible and disinteresting. As a member of the portrayed generation, I find it almost disrespectful for us to be portrayed like this (aimless beings whose lives revolve around their sexual exploits). I’m not going to say that none are, but it is far from being everyone.

I may be old-fashioned for a twenty-three year old woman, but I can find nothing appealing about ‘occasional hook-ups’, ‘one night stands’, and the obvious emotional destruction that comes with it all. Granted its rating should keep younger audiences from seeing it, I can’t imagine why anyone would inflict this on themselves.

I will say that maybe one or two moments weren’t as bad as the rest, but that is about as positive as I can get.

Completely unsurprising to me, Two Night Stand has received mixed, but mostly negative, reviews from critics and audience goers.

It is hard to believe that, in the same year, we had films like Two Night Stand at the same time as American Sniper and The Imitation Games.

How this can be labelled as a ‘romantic comedy’ is beyond me - it is neither romantic, nor funny in any way. All I can gather is that this film is a too-long advertisement for why online dating sites and these kinds of casual encounters are very unwise.

I wouldn’t recommend this film to anyone.