Movie Review
'DATE NIGHT' is meant to be a tailor-made vehicle for two top comedy giants on American TV's "Saturday Night Live", Steve Carell and Tina Fey. They do have good chemistry as they play off each other in their first movie together, but it's so sad that the material given to them is so inferior to their talent. The concept is similar to "The Out of Towners", which has been filmed twice, about a couple who go to New York and experience a night they'll never forget. But this one is presented as an action comedy, since the lead characters are made to go through some action set pieces to make the on-screen proceedings more thrilling.
Steve and Tina are the Fosters, Phil and Claire, who are happily juggling family life in Jersey City with their two kids and their respective careers as tax lawyer and realtor, respectively. They nurture their romance by having a regular date night. They hire a babysitter (Leighton Meester of "Gossip Girl") so they can go out and have dinner while playing a game of cooking up stories for other patrons dining inside the same restaurant with them. One night, Phil decides they should have dinner in a plush Manhattan seafood restaurant called Claw, where reservations are made one month in advance.
While they're waiting for a vacant table to open up for them, they hear the Tripplehorns being called several times. Since no one answers, Phil present themselves as the absentee couple. This starts a series of events that grow progressively more absurd and more dumb. Soon, they're being threatened by two tough guys, Armstrong (Jimmi Simpson) and Collins (rapper Common), to return a flash drive or they'll be harmed. They explain it's a case of mistaken identity but the bad guys refuse to listen to them. They're able to escape with the thugs shooting at them in Central Park. They go to the cops only to find out that the guys chasing them are members of the NYPD.
Claire asks the help of a former client, Holbrooke (Mark Wahlberg, who displays his bare torso in all his scenes), and eventually, they discover that the flash drive is connected with the District Attorney (William Fichtner) and a mobster (Ray Liotta). Also in the supporting cast are James Franco and Mila Kunis as the couple who really got the flash drive, Mark Ruffalo as Steve's friend, and Taraji P. Henson as the female detective who helps the Fosters nail the villains.
The movie is directed by Shawn Levy, who has done other action-comedies like "The Pink Panther" remake and the "Night at the Museum" movies. He probably thought that he can bank on his stars to save this mindless project that often resorts to crude sexual humor and foul language. But he doesn't even know when to stop making fools of his actors. That sequence where Fey pretends she's a whorish stripper, while Carell is her pimp and they dance together on a stripper pole, does not work at all.
They even get involved in wildly unbelievable car stunts when the getaway car they're driving gets attached to a taxi cab. After a while, all the incredible situations they get involved in become boring. Truth to tell, the outtakes at the closing credits seem funnier than the actual movie, with the stars doing adlibs and changing their dialogue on cam. Maybe, Carell and Fey should have written the script themselves. Actually, this movie should be titled "Date Nightmare". The film opened as number one at the U.S. box office but we doubt it if the fans of its stars were pleased with its abominably dimwitted script. Carell and Fey certainly deserve a better screenplay and a more capable director.
'DATE NIGHT' is meant to be a tailor-made vehicle for two top comedy giants on American TV's "Saturday Night Live", Steve Carell and Tina Fey. They do have good chemistry as they play off each other in their first movie together, but it's so sad that the material given to them is so inferior to their talent. The concept is similar to "The Out of Towners", which has been filmed twice, about a couple who go to New York and experience a night they'll never forget. But this one is presented as an action comedy, since the lead characters are made to go through some action set pieces to make the on-screen proceedings more thrilling.
Steve and Tina are the Fosters, Phil and Claire, who are happily juggling family life in Jersey City with their two kids and their respective careers as tax lawyer and realtor, respectively. They nurture their romance by having a regular date night. They hire a babysitter (Leighton Meester of "Gossip Girl") so they can go out and have dinner while playing a game of cooking up stories for other patrons dining inside the same restaurant with them. One night, Phil decides they should have dinner in a plush Manhattan seafood restaurant called Claw, where reservations are made one month in advance.
While they're waiting for a vacant table to open up for them, they hear the Tripplehorns being called several times. Since no one answers, Phil present themselves as the absentee couple. This starts a series of events that grow progressively more absurd and more dumb. Soon, they're being threatened by two tough guys, Armstrong (Jimmi Simpson) and Collins (rapper Common), to return a flash drive or they'll be harmed. They explain it's a case of mistaken identity but the bad guys refuse to listen to them. They're able to escape with the thugs shooting at them in Central Park. They go to the cops only to find out that the guys chasing them are members of the NYPD.
Claire asks the help of a former client, Holbrooke (Mark Wahlberg, who displays his bare torso in all his scenes), and eventually, they discover that the flash drive is connected with the District Attorney (William Fichtner) and a mobster (Ray Liotta). Also in the supporting cast are James Franco and Mila Kunis as the couple who really got the flash drive, Mark Ruffalo as Steve's friend, and Taraji P. Henson as the female detective who helps the Fosters nail the villains.
The movie is directed by Shawn Levy, who has done other action-comedies like "The Pink Panther" remake and the "Night at the Museum" movies. He probably thought that he can bank on his stars to save this mindless project that often resorts to crude sexual humor and foul language. But he doesn't even know when to stop making fools of his actors. That sequence where Fey pretends she's a whorish stripper, while Carell is her pimp and they dance together on a stripper pole, does not work at all.
They even get involved in wildly unbelievable car stunts when the getaway car they're driving gets attached to a taxi cab. After a while, all the incredible situations they get involved in become boring. Truth to tell, the outtakes at the closing credits seem funnier than the actual movie, with the stars doing adlibs and changing their dialogue on cam. Maybe, Carell and Fey should have written the script themselves. Actually, this movie should be titled "Date Nightmare". The film opened as number one at the U.S. box office but we doubt it if the fans of its stars were pleased with its abominably dimwitted script. Carell and Fey certainly deserve a better screenplay and a more capable director.
