Danny (Rob Lowe), a restaurant supply salesman, and Debbie (Demi Moore), an art director at an advertising agency, meet at a baseball game and later link up at a singles bar in Chicago. He's a handsome lothario used to one-night stands; she's having an affair with her boss but is looking for something more romantic.
After making love at Danny's apartment, Debbie tells him, "It's been a slice of heaven." She returns to her place where she lives with Joan (Elizabeth Perkins), a kindergarten teacher whose quick tongue discourages most men. Meanwhile at work, Danny's buddy Bernie (Jim Belushi), an insecure and vulgar fellow who sees himself as a lady killer, queries his friend about his date with Debbie.
The affair continues, and Debbie decides to move in with Danny. Living together proves to be a fretful, difficult experience for them. They try out plenty of new positions for sex, but find that coping with each other's habits, quirks, and expectations is far more challenging. Danny's passivity and inability to open up bother Debbie. At one point, he discovers her looking through his private possessions for clues to his past life.
Debbie, of course, wants them to be a couple, while Danny, hiding behind the myth of the independent male, doesn't want to tie himself down and so ends up treating Debbie as nothing more than a live-in sexual object. And if there isn't enough tension between them, Bernie and Joan are constantly trying to sabotage their relationship.
Moviegoers who can move beyond the locker room obscenities, the explicit sex scenes, and the loud rock music soundtrack will discover that About Last Night... contains a number of cogent observations about singletons, sexual politics, and the emptiness of relationships based only on physical attraction. Screenplay writers Tim Kazurinsky and Denise DeClue have adapted and updated David Mamet's 1974 play Sexual Perversity in Chicago. The result is a comedy about romance in a time when men and women are wary about "the big L word."
In his debut as a feature film director, Edward Zwick draws out a wonderful performance from Demi Moore as Debbie, a women who thinks she deserves a mate capable of commitment and mutual sharing. Jim Belushi is credible as Bernie, the lout who's afraid of women, and Elizabeth Perkins is just right as Joan, the awkward singleton who falls in love with the "perfect man," only to be jilted on New Year's Eve when he announces that he is returning to the wife he never mentioned.
For those who find themselves squirming in their seats while these characters struggle to relate to each other, it is appropriate to keep in mind playwright David Mamet's remark: "What is left unsaid is as important as what is said." The voices inside Danny, Debbie, Bernie, and Joan speak volumes about the loneliness, anger, self-hate, and fear of men and women who remain perplexed about themselves and the opposite sex. About Last Night... plumbs these depths and delivers an evocative portrait of young adults.