With its new rom-com, At Midnight, Paramount Plus is budding for romance as Valentine’s Day comes on the heels of Super Bowl weekend. The romantic comedy follows Sophie, a successful movie star, and Alejandro, an ambitious hotel manager, who take the “safe option” to not fall in love. However, fate may have other plans.
As a Valentine’s Day picture, the original Latin American production heads up a long list of other romantic comedies licensed to celebrate love in February. But with so much enchantment and tales of amour available this weekend, should At Midnight make your watch list?
An unlikely love tale
The two-and-a-half-minute teaser hints at more forbidden reverence, with megastar and superheroine Sophie Wilder (Monica Barbaro, Top Gun: Maverick) falling for a lowly junior hotel manager after discovering her co-star and romantic partner is having an affair.
It’s an untimely discovery. Sophie is shooting Super Society 3, an MCU-styled bookend to a trilogy of films. What’s worse? She now knows her partner is a liar and a cheat, but she isn’t going anywhere until filming wraps.
Now, trapped on one of the most romantic vacation destinations in the western hemisphere, a luxury resort in Cancún, Sophie has to process the betrayal and wrap her hands around a new predicament; deciding whether this local entanglement is her soulmate or simply a dalliance dressed as a knight, boomeranging in the aftermath of her breakup.
In an interview with Screen Rant, Monica talked about why she took the role, what she thought about rom-coms, and how much time she spent on set filming the Paramount Plus love-above-all slice of comedy and romantic life fiction.
“I guess I always felt like rom-coms were sort of a rite of passage as an actor,” Monica said.
“I just sort of assumed I would do one, and then there weren’t that many as I was working in my 20s. There were, but not really in the same way that there are right now. I loved them growing up, [and] I watched so many of them on repeat, and so it just made a lot of sense. Especially after doing a couple of projects that felt really different, it was nice to get to live in this world of love and laughter for a month and a half.”
So what will it be? Does Sophie leave Mexico lowly or lovestruck? We’re excited to see how this “safe option” plays out.
Watch the trailer for At Midnight
In case you haven’t seen it, here’s the trailer for Paramount’s At Midnight.
At Midnight
Directed By: Jonah Feingold.
Starring: Jonah Feingold, Maria Hinojos, and Giovanni M. Porta wrote the scripts.
Monica Barbaro, Whitney Cummings, and Anders Holm.
Category: Romance, Comedy
About the production of At Midnight
Diego Boneta and his production company, Three Amigos, with Porta, Hinojos, and Natalia Boneta, act as co-producers on the project. Michel Franco, Gemma Levinson, and Cory Crespo serve as executive producers, with Fred Berger, David Bernon, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Eréndira Nez Larios, and Josh Glick receiving production credits on the film as well.
At Midnight is based on Giovanni Porta’s original story and is directed by Jonah Feingold, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Maria Hinojos. Feingold is a New York City-based writer-director who made the short film Letters to Manhattan before his feature directorial debut Dating & New York in 2021. Hinojos is a Mexican screenwriter who previously worked on No Because I Fall in Love and Cindy la Regia.
Who are the cast members of At Midnight?
At Midnight stars Diego Boneta and Monica Barbaro. Boneta portrays Alejandro, a deputy hotel manager, and Barbaro, an aspiring actress named Sophie Wilder. Boneta, who starred in Rock of Ages (2012), was most recently seen as the groom, Adan Castillo, in the HBO Max original Father of the Bride. Barbaro rose to prominence in Top Gun: Maverick as “Phoenix.”
At Midnight also features Casey Thomas Brown (in the hilarious The Kominsky Method), another Father of the Bride alum, Catherine Cohen (Search Party), Fernando Carsa (Acapulco), Whitney Cummings (2 Broke Girls), Maya Zapata (Selena’s Secret), and Anders Holm (Anna’s Invention).
Brown portrays Chris, Sophie’s buddy and talent manager. Cohen is Sophie’s best friend, and Carsa, the hotel housekeeper and Alejandro’s confidant.
Stream it or skip it
From what we’ve been privy to thus far, it looks like At Midnight will be a fun and easy watch. Featuring many of the rom-com tropes and clichés we’ve come to love (and hate) – like two individuals from entirely different socio-economic backgrounds accidentally falling in love – the promotional effort for this film suggests Paramount is betting big on At Midnight. And Streaming This Weekend has given the film a projected audience score of 74 (based on the production budget, promotional clips, and marketing initiative).
However, unlike other rom-coms, this one may not have a happy ending. Only a stream of it will tell.
At Midnight will launch on Paramount+ on Friday, February 10, 2023.