At Midnight Review: A Charming But Familiar Rom-Com Runs Out Of Time

During the mythical Golden Age of Hollywood, the romantic-comedy genre could be relied upon as a consistently entertaining, star-studded, and profitable performer at the box office, year in and year out. We’ve fallen quite a long way in the years since despite some recent breakthrough hits like “Crazy Rich Asians” or last year’s double-whammy of “The Lost City” and “Ticket to Paradise.” Instead of studios going out of their way to court genuine movie stars and put their charisma and charm on display for moviegoing audiences to enjoy vicariously, we’ve ended up in a place where those once-ubiquitous theatrical features instead struggle to justify their existence … if they even make it to theaters at all.

That brings us to “At Midnight.” On the surface, it has all the makings of a much-needed throwback date night at the movies, in the vein of “Roman Holiday” before it (which gets a shout-out in the film). Although the co-leads aren’t necessarily the most well-known quantities here, their tangible chemistry, the classic premise of a movie star falling for a humble everyman, and the film’s self-effacing nostalgic streak all combine to make a poignant and admirable statement: Rom-coms aren’t dead, if only we could look back and remember why we love them so much in the first place. Of course, the fly in the ointment comes from the fact that “At Midnight” will release straight to streaming on Paramount+, which makes it much harder to find an audience and somewhat clashes with the film’s main promotional image of co-stars Diego Boneta and Monica Barbaro enjoying a romantic outing at — where else — the movies.

Admittedly, films have a much longer shelf life than the mere circumstances of their release. But for a story so concerned about reconciling the history of the genre with its contemporaries, that glaring irony sets the tone for what follows. “At Midnight,” for all its commendable aspirations to be something more, can’t help but feel caught in a much greater identity crisis than any of its characters face. What we’re left with is a charming picture that, like its own characters, struggles to win its race against time.