Taglines: A comedy with room for romance.
The Night We Never Met movie storyline. Sam has a problem with his roommates: they are disgusting, and don’t seem to share his views on responsibility, privacy, and basic hygiene. Such is his discomfort with his living arrangements that he agrees to share the occupancy of another flat.
He gets two nights a week, the owner (a sleazy frat-boy yuppie named Brian, soon to be married) and Ellen (a would-be painter seeking relief from her boring marriage) each get their separate nights in the flat. Things go extremely well until Sam and Brian swap nights without telling Ellen, who attributes the “nice” things that happen around the place to the slob Brian, while berating the responsible Sam for his hedonistic lifestyle.
The Night We Never Met is a 1993 American romantic comedy film directed by Warren Leight. The film stars Matthew Broderick, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Brooke Smith, Tim Guinee, Annabella Sciorra, Naomi Campbell, Michelle Hurst, Kathryn Rossetter and Catherine Lloyd Burns.
Film Review for The Night We Never Met
“The Night We Never Met” describes a downtown pied-a-terre that is used on alternating days by three total strangers, who wind up washing one another’s dirty dishes and trying to impose their conflicting housekeeping styles on the chaotic decor. The film is intended as a light romantic comedy, even though it sounds more like a prescription for murder.
Working in what is at best a hip sitcom style (and more often a labored, unconvincing version of same), the writer and director Warren Leight explains this premise as best he can. It seems that Brian McVeigh (Kevin Anderson), an obnoxious yuppie stockbroker, holds the lease to this rent-controlled hideaway and wants to use the place with his frat buddies after he marries Janet Beehan (Justine Bateman), a yuppie princess. Brian and his pals have filled the recessed, lighted bookshelves with their collection of beer bottles, mugs, baseball caps and book (“Trump”). The sets and costumes are often funnier than the characters.
Since Brian is so often otherwise engaged, he uses his secretary (Louise Lasser, looking acutely uncomfortable) to sublet time-share use of the apartment to Sam Lester (Matthew Broderick), who is getting tired of his crowded East Village crash pad. The third tenant is Ellen Holder (Annabella Sciorra), a Queens dental hygienist who wants to paint. In case this setup isn’t cute enough, Mr. Leight also works in a pair of nosy neighbors (Doris Roberts and Dominic Chianese) who are repeatedly seen peering into the apartment and looking scandalized by the not-very-scandalous things they see.
Since the tenants never knowingly cross paths, they are able to develop misleading impressions of one another, which is where the potential for comedy lies. But the film condescends to its characters so consistently that it takes on a sour edge. Ellen’s husband (Michael Mantell) runs a dry-cleaning business, wears a gold necklace, boasts about having Neil Diamond tickets and watches sports on a pocket television set when Ellen drags him to a subtitled Scandinavian film. Sam’s ex (Jeanne Tripplehorn) is an inexplicably loud and abrasive French performance artist. Brian himself, though deftly played by Mr. Anderson, is a walking catalogue of boorish behavior.
“The Night We Never Met” is never lifelike enough to evoke the madly romantic New York atmosphere it seems to be after. The actors try hard, but they are hamstrung by too many broad strokes and silly inconsistencies. Both Mr. Broderick and Ms. Sciorra manage to seem warmly appealing in the face of overwhelming obstacles, but the story doesn’t fling them together until its closing scene. This is reason enough to wish Mr. Leight had moved directly to the sequel and skipped the preliminaries.
Also in the cast are Christine Baranski as the sister who shops too much and helps Ellen cover up her indiscretions; Ranjit Chowdhry as the cabbie who tries to calm Ellen down at a critical moment, and Garry Shandling as a dental patient who repeatedly makes passes at her. Observing that Ellen touches him only while wearing rubber gloves, he wonders whether to take this personally.
The Night We Never Met (1993)
Directed by: Warren Leight
Starring: Matthew Broderick, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Brooke Smith, Tim Guinee, Annabella Sciorra, Naomi Campbell, Michelle Hurst, Kathryn Rossetter, Catherine Lloyd Burns
Screenplay by: Warren Leight
Production Design by: Lester Cohen
Cinematography by: John Thomas
Film Editing by: Camilla Toniolo
Costume Design by: Ellen Lutter
Set Decoration by: Jessica Lanier
Art Direction by: Daniel Talpers
Music by: Evan Lurie
MPAA Rating: R for language.
Distributed by: Miramax Films
Release Date: April 30, 1993
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