Tomorrow Night (1998) User Reviews

This is weird

[prushik · 7/10 · 3 February 2014]

This is a very strange movie. This is possibly the strangest movie I have ever seen. That being said, it is quite enjoyable, especially for fans of Louis C.K.

Some scenes are very funny, you can see Louis C.K.'s humor throughout the film. However, it is really weird, everything is exaggerated greatly in this movie to the point where it barely resembles reality. Definitely not something that everyone will enjoy. If you are a Louis C.K. fan, and are willing to spend some time watching something very different from mainstream movies, watch it. It's only $5, what have you got to lose (besides $5 and an hour and a half)?

my notes

[FeastMode · 6/10 · 24 June 2019]

Kinda weird but some very hilarious parts and interesting story overall. also some really boring and really weird parts. good overall (1 viewing)

Strange things develop in this film's dark room

[lib-4 · 16 October 1998]

This is a very strange movie. Louis CK's absurd characters reveal that sense of humor he employs as a Letterman and O'Brien writer. Anyone who watches this movie will never look at ice cream the same. Rick Shapiro as Tina is the funniest character in the film. Really low budget but fun. I had to admit laughing at the inanity- the son who has been out of touch for 20 years, the dog's revenge and the adopted son.

The Laemmle Theate audience was thoroughly whacked and guffawing at the screening...exquisitely funny and out there.

[billyrat · 10/10 · 6 June 2000]

Starring the exquisite veteran Martha Greenhouse as a horny old senior, Louis C.K.'s absurdist b & w psychological howler, Tomorrow Night, rocked the L.A. Laemmle Theater audience in it's June, 2000 screenings. With an array of New York characters heads and goiters above Woody Allen's pale squatters--an angry chain-smoking Queen hungry for a few fingers, Lola Vagina - love temptress, and a homy postman funnier and wiser than any Greek Chorus, Louis C.K. o'er-leaps his tv and comedy club roots and lures his audience into a deeper, darker, and more difficult tradition of absurdist cinema laughs--hard to pull off, but he did it, combining fetish, aging, repression, queerness, friendship, and yearning into a timeless, fresh, and ultimately hysterical--in all the best ways-

worth seeing

[petshop · 8/10 · 6 February 1999]

An anal-retentive camera store manager with an odd sexual ritual, (i.e. sitting in large bowls of ice cream and masturbating) seeks a girlfriend and chooses from his customers.

He befriends an reclusive old woman and soon becomes her lover.

She tries to keep this from her insanely verbally abusive husband, and survives on the hope that her estranged son who has joined the military will return one day. The performances of the old couple are so bad that they are unsettlingly realistic. One can almost see the line between acting and being and wonders if this is intentional. If so, it's brilliant. If not, clever camp. I'm not sure which answer would be more disturbing.

The clever ending revolves around an unclaimed package of photos. The clerk finally musters up enough courage to break the unspoken ethics code of photo shop clerks and look at the photos. Only to see they are pictures of his own murder.

Very weird, which is good, but a little too boring to survive on weirdness alone.

Quirky but Pure Joy

[keke-924-615613 · 9/10 · 15 February 2014]

This little film is such a gem. The little episodes are such great everyday surreal. Not 'leave the universe' surreal... just an interesting alt perspective of how really strange but true is the world. A quick compare: if you enjoyed a film like Down by Law or the original Little Shop of Horrors, you should just stop what you are doing right now and watch this movie. I love that it sat for so long because the cast is (in 2014)very surprising--lots of big names from comedy doing great characters. A small but happy bonus is the set of the photo shop. There are so many cameras. The shelves of the photo shop look like a museum of hipster photography--those backdrops are like porn for camera nuts! Thanks, Louie! A great little film.

Hilarious and Intriguing

[johnloch · 8/10 · 4 February 2014]

Something totally different from Louis CK!

The main character draws you in and the supporting cast is hilarious.

Some standout performances by Chuck Sklar, Rick Shapiro, Steve Carell and J.B. Smoove.

Chuck Sklar plays the straight man so well you just have to find out what he's hiding.

Rick Shapiro as Tina has some of the funniest lines and facial expressions in the movie.

Steve Carell's scenes will have you laughing as hard as he is.

And I want J.B. Smoove to be my mailman!

The movie reminds me of a Woody Allen flick if Woody Allen shot and edited the film on mushrooms and nitrous.

So forget trying to make any logical sense of the movie and enjoy the hilarious trip.

Really, really out there.

[JOJO-22 · 30 October 1998]

Very funny film, but be warned, it's out there. Think Woody Allen on a seriously mind-altering drug.

TOMORROW NIGHT was an early step in the direction of LOUIE

[filmbizarro · 8/10 · 30 January 2014]

Louis C.K. is a bit of an idol - certainly the funniest comedian out there. I've been following him since the start of the "Lucky Louie" show, which I personally loved, but he found his perfect style with the newer "Louie". I'm aware of some of his earlier short films, which are all strange in their own way but I wouldn't say I'm a big fan of them overall. But there is no doubt that Louis C.K. returned to his earlier style with "Louie". Let's be fair, "Pootie Tang" doesn't really count (nor should it, as it was essentially being messed with without Louis C.K.'s consent). It's interesting to me to see "Tomorrow Night", his first feature now available on his website, as you can so clearly see how "Louie" could develop from that.

Like many independent comedies, "Tomorrow Night" isn't about the story it has to tell, but about situations and characters. This one is about a whole truck load of messed up people. In the center is Charles. He owns a photo/camera store, he's not very social and he keeps the store very neat (so everyone automatically hates him). After noticing his stack of processed photos that haven't been picked up growing too big, he says no to new orders and starts calling the customers to get their stuff. Most of them do, and this forces him into many strange meetings. Among them are Lola Vagina (she's a sex fiend, as you might understand), an old lady who hasn't seen or heard from her son for 20 years since he went into the army, and so on.

The old lady is the other main plot, and some of the funnier scenes. Her husband, father of her son, is an annoying asshole who doesn't let her do anything, constantly screams and laughs at her misery and gambles all the time. Her only friend is Tina, a very sexually open woman (played by a man familiar to many Louis C.K. fans, Rick Shapiro). Her son is stuck in the army thinking that his mother has never returned his letters, but in reality he has been the bottom of a joke for 20 years. The mail room guys are throwing his mail away while laughing hysterically (maybe one of Steve Carell's best roles, simply just laughing). Funny joke, guys! This old lady is living quite a miserable life, and Charles is soon in the middle of all that.

It's hard to explain why this movie is funny and entertaining, because sometimes it doesn't even make you laugh out loud. Most of the time, actually. Yet I found it to be hilarious in an odd, "what-the-hell-am-I- watching-and-why" way. Louis C.K. does the same in "Louie", just perfected, but in that show it's also less weird. This gets very weird at times, and it honestly pleases my artsy-fartsy-surreal-like mind at times too, which is just great. Is the movie great simply because I am a fan boy of Louis C.K.? No, because I have admitted to not enjoying his shorts that much, and it took a while to get into "Tomorrow Night", but once I understood it and got into its style, I couldn't get enough. It's just bizarre!

Had "Tomorrow Night" been released around the time it was made it could have been a cult hit. I don't think it can in 2014. It had a few screenings back then (apparently also in Sweden, which proves to me that we're not completely useless here) and then went nowhere, stuck in Louis C.K.'s personal archives, along with the debts to his friends that helped him make the movie. But now that it is here, I don't think it will make the mark it could have - but boy am I glad that he released it. It's fun as hell without always making you laugh, because it's just such an oddity. There's a definite proof of talent in it, both comedy- wise and strictly because it looks great. Quaint, but great - some shots are actually done with the eye of an artist, which can't be said for every comedy. "Tomorrow Night" is not only for fans of Louis C.K., it's for people who thought "Clerks" didn't have enough people sitting bare- butted in ice cream. It's so absurd that I find it hard to hate it.

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Generally just too odd for me, without many hooks for me to start getting into it

[bob the moo · 11 June 2014]

Charles is the owner of a camera and photograph developing store (important to note that the film was made in the late 90's); he lives a lonely life where he shuns most interactions and spends his evening sitting in a bowl of ice cream while music blares on his record player. Florence is an old woman who spends her days chatting with friend Tina but is treated badly by her domineering, gambler husband Lester. These two lives move forward but will eventually intertwine.

Although I don't think he is perfect, I do find that Louis CK is a very interesting comedian and when he offered this old film for $5 recently, I decided to give it a go. The film is presented in black/white with a style and content that occasionally suggests a much older film than the late 90's but the humor is certainly nothing but modern. If the plot sounds deliberately odd then it is right because the whole film has this very odd air to it of stilted awkwardness and oddity; if you are into that then you'll love this film a great deal but for me, even as one who likes CK, I mostly thought it didn't work. Too often the silences and stillness didn't work and the lack of me being amused left the material exposed. That said there are lots of moments that work but they are mostly where energy is brought into the film, or odd images are nicely presented.

So for example the energy brought by Smoove and Shapiro is really fun, while some cool "out of the blue" stuff is oddly enjoyable – such as the boy Clean. Sadly though too much of it left me cold and just felt too out there for me to be able to connect with. If you're in the mood and get on the same wavelength then I guess you'll have more bits that work than I did – but this film really is a very tight wavelength.