Movie Review: ‘Date Night’

A married couple from the suburbs find themselves having a far more adventurous night than they bargained for. (Myles Aronowitz/Twentieth Century Fox)

This one reminded us of Steve Carell’s last action comedy Get Smart—car chases, dodging bullets, and acting just plain-old fatuous and farcical.

In this date night gone awfully wrong in the silliest of ways, Steve Carell is paired up with the sidesplitting Tina Fey. In our opinion, they are the funniest actor and actress in Hollywood today, and their pairing works famously, easily justifying the price of admission.

Together they are the Fosters—a conventional couple from the Jersey burbs plagued by their daily lives—kids, work, and chores. In theory, having a date night should help prevent married couples from slipping into that inevitable transformation from lovers to “really, really good roommates.” This fate is the kiss of death for their friends, a fate they are consciously battling.

So they spice it up by dressing up and heading to “that new” chic high priced NYC restaurant. The shenanigans begin when they can’t get a table because they didn’t book reservations a month in advance. In an effort to keep things exciting and salvage the date, Phil steers the couple on their first wrong turn down a road of adventurous disasters by pretending to be another couple already with a reservation.

Enter situation comedy, where they end up in countless hairy predicaments involving a mobster, political scandal, and a detective story. It’s a fish out of water scenario that puts Steve and Tina right into their element of ridiculous mirth. What follows is giddy and comical. We were cracking up often. But there was also an element of surprisingly strong chemistry and timing, between our leads, as well as a genuinely romantic quality.

Other notable performances include Ray Liotta playing his usual mobster character but this time as the bad guy in a comedy. It brings to mind one of his latest rolls in the Wild Hogs as a hardcore biker gang leader. Other notable actors also poke fun at their own typecasts. For example, Mark Wahlberg appears, un-shirted, as the superhero/spy character Holbrooke, and Grammy- award-winning-rapper-turned-actor Common plays a tough-guy character reminiscent of his last performance in Wanted.

Overall the movie is average, the acting fine, and the plot is nothing special. It’s the comedic interplay of Carell and Fey with their witty improv and dry facial expressions that brings it home.

[etRating value=“ 3”]