Comedians make quite a couple in ‘Date Night’
Most of the time I find too much predictability in a movie a
minus, but sometimes a movie delivers just what I expect. Nothing
less and nothing more. And that can be okay, too.
”
Date Night,
”
a romantic comedy/action film from director Shawn Levy, has two
big things going for it
– Tina Fey and Steve Carell. I have enjoyed the comedic stylings
of the two on NBC’s Thursday night line-up for years. Fey is the
always pessimistic, unlucky in love Liz Lemon on
”
30 Rock,
”
and Carell is the always optimistic, unlucky in love Michael
Scott on
”
The Office.
”
Comedians make quite a couple in ‘Date Night’
Most of the time I find too much predictability in a movie a minus, but sometimes a movie delivers just what I expect. Nothing less and nothing more. And that can be okay, too.
“Date Night,” a romantic comedy/action film from director Shawn Levy, has two big things going for it – Tina Fey and Steve Carell. I have enjoyed the comedic stylings of the two on NBC’s Thursday night line-up for years. Fey is the always pessimistic, unlucky in love Liz Lemon on “30 Rock,” and Carell is the always optimistic, unlucky in love Michael Scott on “The Office.”
Both of the shows are funny enough that they make me laugh out loud – hysterically sometimes – most weeks I watch them. The best thing about the shows is that Fey and Carell are willing to do almost anything to get a laugh, even if it means humiliating themselves a little bit on camera.
Though Fey and Carell are in the same Thursday night lineup at NBC, according to an “Entertainment Weekly” article, the two never worked together before “Date Night. So even with two of the funniest comedians around, there was a chance the chemistry between them would fall flat.
The premise of the movie is simple enough. Claire Foster (Tina Fey) and Phil Foster (Steve Carell) are a married couple, with kids and two full-time jobs whose lives have become a little predictable. They still go out for a date night once a week, but it’s always to the same place where they order the same meals and they don’t even bother to dress up for it anymore.
Friend Haley (Kristen) tells Claire that she and her husband are getting divorced, and her husband Brad (Mark Ruffalo) tells Phil about it. The thing that gets to Phil most is when Brad said there was nothing really wrong with them, but they just turned into “really good roommates.” Sworn to secrecy about the pending divorce by their friends, Claire and Phil keep their worries about their own relationship to themselves.
But when the next date night comes around, Claire does her hair and makeup, puts on a fancy dress and heels, prompting Phil to change up their regular routine.
He decides they should go into the city, in New York for a meal at some hip new restaurant. He convinces Claire it won’t take that long to get there and they won’t need a reservation.
But of course, he’s wrong. When they arrive at the hot night spot, it is packed and the maitre’d is rude to them. They decide to wait at the bar to see if a spot opens up. When one of the waitresses calls for a party of two that seems to be MIA, Phil spontaneously says that he and Claire are the couple so they can take the reservation.
The two are enjoying the meal when a couple of men come up to them, whom they assume are restaurant staff ready to throw them out for stealing someone else’s reservation.
Armstrong (Jimmi Simpson) and Collins (Common) take the couple out into the alley, where the Fosters slowly realize the men have mistaken them for the couple whose reservation they stole. That couple is mixed up with the mob and these guys are trying to get back a memory stick that has incriminating evidence on it.
Levy, who directed the film is best known for directing movies full of slapstick, physical humor such as “Night at the Museum,” “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian,” “The Pink Panther” and “Cheaper by the Dozen.” So its no surprise that “Date Night” is full of the same kind of sight humor. It’s like low-brow comedy, but the PG-13 version of it.
Claire and Phil get away from the bad guys, just barely, and they go to the police station to report the attack. But when they are there talking with Detective Arroyo (Taraji P. Henson,) they see the two thugs who tried to kidnap them and they suddenly realize they don’t know who to trust of the cops are crooked. They decide to take things into their own hands and find the couple whose reservations they stole so that they can get the memory stick back.
Claire enlists the help of a former client from her real estate agency, Holbrooke (Mark Wahlberg), who works in private security and has a penchant for walking around with his shirt off. They find the couple, played by James Franco and Mila Kunis, but the adventure doesn’t stop there.
Fey’s Claire is not all that different from her turn as Liz Lemon on “30 Rock.” She is sarcastic, pessimistic and a really bad dancer. And a lot of Michael Scott seems to come out in Carell’s Phil Foster. But for fans of the two TV shows, it’s probably enough to make the movie worth seeing.
