Perfect Strangers

Perfect Strangers is a dinner party movie. In case you haven't seen one, the idea is that at the dinner party some slightly outrageous thing happens, everyone gets stirred up and some dramatic revelations are made about the attendees. What's in a name (which we saw at the film festival in 2012) is a classic example. In that movie, the outrageous thing was a couple announcing that they were going to call their unborn baby Adolphe .

So, in Perfect Strangers we have a group of 30- 40-somethings ( 3 couples and a single guy) meeting for for dinner at the apartment of one of the couples.The men have known each other since they were teenagers so they're old friends. In this case, the outrageous suggestion is that everyone has to disclose to the group any activity on their mobile phone. Texts must be read out, photos must be displayed and calls must be on speaker phone. And to complicate matters slightly, two of the guys swap phones (since they have the same model) so that the unmarried one gets the nude photo on What's App at 10 pm rather than the married one.

There are some laugh-out-loud moments, but probably not enough for what should have been light entertainment. We get to know the characters slightly too well, and they are a little bit too likeable so we can't just rejoice in them getting their come-uppances, we wince at their potential suffering instead. Ultimately, the revelation of too many secrets just made me sad.

Anne's rating 2.5/5