Date Night

Director: Shawn Levy
Writer: Josh Klausner
Starring: Steve Carell, Tina Fey
Release Date: April 9, 2010
Length: 1 hour 28 minutes

Steve Carell and Tina Fey. Those are probably the two funniest people in show business right now. When you put them together, you get an unbelievable chemistry. When you throw in a decent script, it get’s even better. Boring 40-year-old couple, Phil and Clare Foster are leaving their two kids with the babysitter for the night, when they spontaneously go into the city for dinner. When they stupidly don’t make a reservation at a popular restaurant, they pretend to be another couple, the Tripplehorns, who missed their dinner. This becomes their first risk of the night, when two tough looking guys accuse them of stealing from Italian mafia guy, Joe Moletto (Ray Liotta). Director Shawn Levy (Cheaper By The Dozen, Night At The Museum) is not one of my favourites, and I was scared Date Night was going to be a Get Smart version of Mr. And Mrs. Smith, but Tina Fey’s and Steve Carell’s performances made me realize why I was seeing this movie in the first place. Although the script has an original premise, and some funny jokes, it dragged during quite a lot of scenes. Perhaps those scenes dragged for me because they were trying to be serious and I couldn’t possibly take them seriously. I needed funny lines in this movie to keep me going, which thankfully there were a lot of. Date Night has one bad case of celebrity cameo-itis. Although Mila Kunis and James Franco gave funny performances as the real Tripplehorns, all the familiar faces reminded me of bad films that use celebrity cameos to get your attention back to the screen. Thankfully, Date Night’s script and performances held there own and I could tell the film wasn’t using these recognizable people to cover a bad script. Exceeding my expectations, but not rising to the top, Date Night was an altogether steady film.