Date Night
Review
by Anthony Morris
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Date Night
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Claire (Tina Fey) and Phil (Steve Carell)
are a married couple, and do you really care what happens next? It's
Tina Fey and Steve Carell, two of the funniest people on American
television (even if Australian networks treat their shows like crap):
just having them in the same room together should result in
hilarity.
Well, yes and no. Yes, sticking them
together does result in a fair amount of hearty chuckles. But it turns
out that even hysterically funny people can only do so much when
they're in a movie that's only so-so.
The basic set-up is strong, if not exactly
inspired: worried that the stresses of work and parenthood means
they're falling into a rut, they decide to crank their usual date night
antics up a notch and go out for a swanky dinner in Manhattan.
Unfortunately, swanky dinners are tough to obtain, so when they pretend
to be another couple to get a reservation they end up being taken out
into an alley and told to hand over "the flash drive" at gunpoint.
Having no idea what's happening, they flee, and a series of supposedly
madcap adventures follow.
Thing is, while both Fey and Carell are very
funny (and have good "married couple" chemistry) often the scenes they
find themselves in aren't all that special.
It doesn't help that this New York seems
strangely under-populated: usually this kind of film would throw in a
bunch of memorable cameo performances, but everyone else - even an
impressively shiftless Mark Wahlberg - just seems to be going through
the motions.
It's not over-the-top enough to be a truly
crazy night, nor is it grounded enough to make us care during the
occasional serious discussion of the state of their marriage. But hey,
you are getting Fey and Carell doing their best: if you're even
slightly a fan of one of them then Date Night is date night material.
3 out
of 5
Date Night
Australian release: 8th April,
2010
Official
Site: Date
Night
Cast: Steve Carell, Tina Fey, Mark
Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, James Franco, Kristen Wiig, Common, Ray Liotta,
Mark Ruffalo, Leighton Meester
Director: Shawn Levy
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