Joy Bryant

(On Cable TV, March 2015)  I wasn’t expecting much from this low-profile romantic comedy (a remake of a 1986 film based on a 1974 David Mamet play), but I should have suspected otherwise given that it stars the enormously likable Kevin Hart, Regina Hall, Michael Ealy and Joy Bryant.  Set in downtown Los Angeles, About Last Time details a year in the life of four young people, during which they meet, fall in love, break up, reconcile and change careers.  Almost immediately charming, it’s a film built on dialogues and performances, and all four main actors truly knock it out of the park, with particular mentions for Hart and Hall, both of whom play the uninhibited comic relief couple to the more conventional Ealy and Bryant.  (Elsewhere in the film, Paula Patton has another great but too-short turn as a romantic antagonist.)  While About Last Night isn’t particularly original, it’s slickly-made, modern, almost constantly funny and features intensely likable actors.  It’s hard to ask for much more from a romantic comedy