At Midnight Parent Guide

It’s time for the next take in the superhero action movie, so Sophie (Monica Barbaro) stops by the trailer of her co-star and boyfriend of five years, Adam (Anders Holm). To her horror, she finds him passionately kissing another woman. “I’m in character so this doesn’t count, right?” he says.

Sophie quickly discovers that her outraged feelings are irrelevant. Their shared agent, Margot (Whitney Cummings), insists that Adam and Sophie are more famous together than they are apart, and they need to maintain the façade of their relationship for public relations purposes. Reluctantly, Sophie heads off to Mexico to film the final leg of the movie trilogy, still publicly linked with Adam. There she meets a handsome hotel manager with puppy dog eyes, a great sense of humor, and a talent for cooking - and things get complicated.

For Alejandro (Diego Boneta), any relationship with Sophie is risky. He has a has a history of one-night stands to stave off emotional connection and the potential for rejection. He’s also just learned of a potential employment problem: romantic relationships with hotel guests could get him fired. From the start, both Sophie and Alejandro have difficult decisions to make: their relationship or their careers, honesty or self-deception, dreams or defeatism…

At Midnight is a sweetly conventional romantic comedy. There’s nothing new here, but the movie delivers the traditional formula with a light touch and some real heart. Monica Barbaro is believably vulnerable, battling between her desire for personal authenticity and the structural misogyny of Hollywood. Diego Boneta convincingly struggles with his fears of intimacy and failure. Both main characters are sufficiently developed that audiences will care about what happens to them and even the side characters, sketchy as they are, provide some additional comic heft to the film.

The biggest disappointment here is the Restricted rating, thanks to four totally unnecessary sexual expletives. As a family movie critic, this makes me bang my head against the wall because aside from the f-words (mostly in Spanish), this is a pretty standard PG-13 movie. In fact, there’s less sex than I would expect in the genre, although there are several scenes of women wearing dresses or bikinis with very deep cleavage and considerable exposure. Drinking is also pretty light and there’s no drug use at all.

On the plus side, At Midnight offers a female protagonist who learns to exert agency over her own life; who refuses to be manipulated or pigeonholed. The script also gives Alejandro room for growth, vulnerability, and emotional honesty. The relationship is satisfying and the chemistry is believable, making At Midnight a decent choice for adults or teens who want a low-stress, romantic movie night.