Review of After Hours (1985) by Paul Z — 08 Aug 2008

I've hardly ever put much thought into the SoHo district of New York City. You hear so much about Brooklyn and the Bronx and Manhattan and Chinatown and Little Italy that SoHo is a place that's open to speculation. After Hours, directed by Martin Scorsese, famously a native of NYC, creates hands-down his goofiest and most eccentric atmosphere of his entire body of movies. He creates an almost Cronenbergian or Naked Lunch-ish feeling, practically a zombietown that Griffin Dunne traverses through once outside of his workplace. It's fun, it's cozy, Scorsese and screenwriter Joe Minion's concept of SoHo alone being funny.

The cast is full of people you almost mourn when watching due to how little we see them anymore. Dunne, though he carries the story well and has his funny moments, is hardly the film's highlight. Teri Garr, pre-multiple sclerosis beautiful Teri Garr, is quite funny as a cocktail waitress who desperately wants Griffin Dunne to stay at her apartment at the times when he is most needed someplace else or most in need of fleeing for his life. Catherine O'Hara plays a manic, scarcely feminine joker of a woman who lets Griffin Dunne use her phone, but never actually lets him call anyone on it. John Heard is a generous and congenial but at sharp turns poundingly violent bartender. Rosanna Arquette is their clever introduction to quirkiness, the date Dunne meets whose mannerisms and linguistics are just borderline nuts. Linda Fiorentino and Will Patton play the most interesting pair of sculptor and leather-clad S & M punk I've ever seen. And the fact that Cheech and Chong play a pair of bumbling burglars in a truck is funny in itself.

After Hours is the only film where you'll find Scorsese using music from the present time, as you will hear to your surprise the 1980s synthesizer in the fittingly quirky musical score, but not for long. He bangs Bach's Air On the G String throughout, with Joni Mitchell, Robert and Johnnie, and The Monkees. This accompanies his familiar intensity with the camera as it soars and rams.

After Hours is a wonderfully atmospheric, cozily quirky farce. One way to look at it is that in essence, it's a darker, longer, more violent episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.