A comedy/drama with teeth, "Night Owls" is a biting look at relationships, hero worship, and sports heroism...without showing one second of sports action.
"Owls" follows Kevin (Adam Pally), a workaholic video assistant at a small but legendary college football program headed by Coach Will Campbell (Peter Krause).
Kevin has aspirations of a coaching career of his own, but pauses one evening for a fling with the sexy Madeline (Rosa Salazar). She takes him back to "her place," which Kevin later discovers is the home of his boss, who is out of town...and Madeline has taken a bottle of Xanax.
Knowing a dead woman in his home would cause undue negative attention to the coach, Kevin...calls an assistant coach, who instructs Kevin to...not take her to the hospital.
Madeline survives, and says she is the mistress of the (very married) coach and was trying to get his attention. Kevin, horrified but unable to leave her there, keeps her awake and the duo embark on a verbal war of words that has them both questioning their life plans, their place in the world, and who they both are as people.
The discussions are frank and real if a little too on-the-nose for reality. The subjects they tackle, however, run the gamut of young people in their 20s--love, career aspirations, sex, and fame. Each are forced to confront the demons that drive them both, and address their struggles with success and failure and their place in the world.
Kevin looks down on Madeline for what he sees as her naivete in expecting Will to leave his wife and family for her; she mocks his hero worship of the coach, calling the man his "mentor" when they hardly know each other.
It's an interesting dynamic, where both characters simultaneously revere and hate the same man depending on the subject of the conversastion. And as they continue to talk, each of them break down barriers with each other and themselves, until the climax, when the man himself shows up to put the situation to rest.
"Night Owls" is the kind of fun and engaging movie you only see at a film festival, though it does feature a couple of recognizable stars: Krause, from TV's "Parenthood" and "Six Feet Under," and Tony Hale, best known as Buster from "Arrested Development." Both have single-scene appearances, obviously designed to lend legitimacy to an independent film, and while it succeeds to a degree, they are more distracting than anything.
No, this film passes or fails on the backs of Salazar and Pally, and the duo hits it out of the park, unafraid to lay themselves out for the film. Their early sexual chemistry turns to quick, intense disdain, then slowly something more affectionate. In a mainstream romantic comedy, you would be counting down the minutes until they fall into love, but is this that kind of movie?
"Night Owls" is one dynamite movie, one of the best of the domestic features, and a must see at the Indy Film Fest. If you are at the festival, go out of your way to see it.