1/10
Awful
23 June 2001
The idea is to have something interesting happening in the first ten minutes to keep the audience hooked. Late Night Shopping manages to avoid interest for much longer than that. When we do get to a point, it is so monumentally moronic that I kept thinking I must have misunderstood it. But I didn't.

Sean tells the story of an Osaka landlord who rented the same apartment to two people at the same time who worked different shifts and so didn't realise they were sharing. His friend asks "But what about the weekends?" Sean doesn't have an adequate explanation. Sean then tells the story of his own similar problem, which is that he isn't sure his girlfriend is still living at home as he works during the night and she works during the day so they never see each other. This has been going on for three weeks. But his friend doesn't ask: "Yes, but as I said before, what about the weekends? You must see her then. It doesn't make sense. What are you going on about, Sean? Are you on medication or something?" But let's be generous and assume that they both work seven days a week.

We see Sean checking to see if the soap and towels have been used. (In fact, bizarrely, he starts to carry the soap around with him.) But what about his girlfriend's conditioner and shampoo, sanpro and moisturiser, toothpaste and toothbrush. Let's go to the kitchen. What about food and drink? Is any missing? Has any been bought? In the bedroom, has the shared bed been made or not? Are her clothes being used and exchanged for clean ones? Is the laundry basket fuller? In the toilet, is the seat up or down? I mean, good grief!

And to cap it all Paul arranges to leave work early to see if his girlfriend is still living at home. Why doesn't he just phone her?

But it gets worse. In the last act although no-one told Vincent where the rest of the group are going he manages to find them. Lenny's love interest and Sean's girlfriend conveniently appear to be best friends and also manage to find the group. There isn't even the slightest attempt to explain any of these extraordinarily unlikely coincidences.

To be fair the dialogue is OK but not nearly good enough to make up for the weak characters or annoyingly lame story.

I heard one of actors interviewed and he promised "no guns, no drugs, no corsets." I thought, "great". But after half-an-hour of tedium I was yelling at the screen: "I want guns! I want drugs! I want corsets!"

It wouldn't have taken much to sort these problems out but on the official website the director boasts that the film wasn't script-edited. That's all you need to know.
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