( EW.com ) -- In `` About Last Night , '' two couples who are polar opposites — one sweet , restrained , and devoted ; the other raunchy , angry , and uncommitted — form together out of two sets of best friends in Los Angeles . Danny ( Michael Ealy ) and Debbie ( Joy Bryant ) are the nice ones . Back in the day when this movie ( or at least a version of it ) starred Rob Lowe and Demi Moore , they would have been called `` yuppies , '' and by that I mean less their status than their style : the intimate meals consumed with wine under mood lighting at the kitchen island , the way the two hold their feelings in . Anna Kendrick dives into 'The Last Five Years ' with Jeremy Jordan . Of course , yuppie style in the movies is often code for People Who Live Too Much On the Surface to Have a Good Relationship , but it 's clear early on that Danny and Debbie really are meant for each other . Their lovey-dovey moments are genuine and , on occasion , touching — like when he takes her to a Dodgers game with lousy bleachers season tickets that have been in his family for decades , and she loves him for holding on to them . The plot of most romantic comedies consists of the things that get in the way of two people getting together . That 's what happens in `` About Last Night , '' too , except that the only thing getting in the way of Danny and Debbie getting together is their own relationship . They hold everything up to a microscope and become convinced that their foibles are fatal . They also fall apart with a little help from their friends . As soon as Bernie ( Kevin Hart ) and Joan ( Regina Hall ) meet , they know how to do exactly three things : drink , fight , and go to bed in lusty , nasty ways . But it 's not just that they like ragging on each other and then making up by doing things like having sex with one of them wearing a chicken mask . Bernie , a devoted bachelor , is n't so much scared of commitment as he is blithely , belligerently contemptuous of it , and Joan , a dental hygienist , treats love as if it were plaque — as something to be removed . The two spread their toxic belief that love is a second-rate emotion into the hearts of their two ( wiser ) pals , who start , almost in spite of themselves , to listen to them . Casting Net : Zach Galifianakis may team up with Julianne Moore . When `` About Last Night '' is funny , which is every so often , it 's because of Kevin Hart . He now owns the fastest mouth in movie comedy , and he knows how to employ his whole high-pitched Chris Tucker street-fury style so that it expresses something more humane than it did when Tucker was ruling the screen with it . In `` About Last Night , '' Hart blows up , to hilariously oversize proportions , the eternal male desire for freedom . He 's raunch on wheels . On paper , `` About Last Night '' is a third-generation copy of David Mamet 's 1974 stage play `` Sexual Perversity '' in Chicago — but if anything , the way the material has now been rewritten again , it comes closer to Mamet 's rancorous vision of dueling hormones than the '80s screen version did . That said , the play itself was just a trifle ( though it once seemed novel , much more than it does 40 years later , for the vital vulgarity of Mamet 's voice ) . The 1986 `` About Last Night '' was watchable but mediocre , and the new version is watchable ... and a bit less mediocre . You always know , in essence , where it 's going , and I wish that Ealy and Bryant seemed less like a truly nice couple and more like movie stars . By the end , however , the movie has captured something undeniably genuine about contemporary relationships : all the ways that they can , and will , get in their own way . Grade : B . See the original story at EW.com . CLICK HERE to Try 2 RISK FREE issues of Entertainment Weekly . © 2011 Entertainment Weekly and Time Inc. All rights reserved .
`` About Last Night '' tells the story of two couples who are polar opposites . The movie is a third-generation copy of a David Mamet stage play . It stars Michael Ealy , Kevin Hart , Joy Bryant and Regina Hall . The movie is watchable and a bit less mediocre than a 1986 version .