From beginning to end, Date Night, starring Steve Carell and Tina Fey, feels like a film left over from the 50s, remade in the 80s and now brought to life in 2010. Though it be high concept formula entertainment through and through, it succeeds where its players do. Luckily they’re all more than capable.
The television stars play Phil and Claire Foster, a pair of working parents making a suburban life for themselves out in New Jersey. Seeking a night out to escape the kids, the couple drive into Manhattan and take the reservation of another couple, the Tripplehorns, in order to eat at a posh seafood restaurant.
Turns out the Tripplehorns stole bad things from bad people, as two of the bad guys (Common and Jimmi Simpson) tell them at gunpoint.
Hi-jinks ensue, as they usually do. It’s Adventures in Babysitting, only Adventures in the Lives of the Couple the Babysitter’s Covering For.
Directed by Shawn Levy (the perennial helmer of laid-back studio fare like Cheaper by the Dozen and Night at the Museum), the man knows enough to let his two stars off the leash, and they appropriately infuse Josh Klausner‘s script with their own jokes and humor.
As a matter of fact, if there is one exceedingly noticeable talent Levy has possessed throughout his very financially successful career, it’s an active awareness of his actors. He doesn’t get in the way, and they usually reward him for it.
Date Night is essentially a collection of situation-comedy bent scenes in which Carell/Fey play off fellow top-notch performers, be it Mark Wahlberg playing a computer whiz with an apparent abhorrence for wearing shirts, James Franco and Mila Kunis as the infamous Tripplehorns or even Mark Ruffalo and Kristen Wiig as a couple on the fritz.
The Franco/Kunis scene is one of the funniest of the year, going so far as to feature a shout-out to Michael Mann’s Heat. Enjoy the moment.
This is wholesome entertainment that might have starred people like Doris Day and Rock Hudson way back when. Sure, now there’s mild stripping and sex jokes but, in this day and age, it’s tame and family oriented.
The editing is atrocious, but it feels like no one’s fault. With the amount of improvisation going on in this thing, what’s one to do with the continuity and coverage? The best they can, and nothing more.
All of this plus a well-put together car chase in the middle of the film make Date Night one of the more comfortable experiences at the cinema so far this year.
Why not eat some comfort food made by two of the funniest people alive?
7 out of 10
Did you see Date Night? What did you think?