Date Night

"Date Night" is directed by Shawn Levy.  It stars Tina Fey and Steve Carrell.  Ray Liotta, James Franco, Mila Kunis, Mark Ruffalo, Kristen Wiig, and Taraji P. Henson have small roles.  Mark Wahlberg's role is somewhere in between.

Steve Carrell and Tina Fey play Phil and Claire Foster, respectively - a couple living in New Jersey.  Their lives are a gigantic rut and each week includes the exact same date, at the exact same restaraunt, eating the exact same food.  One night they try to switch things up and go into New York City for a expensive night on the town.  That turns out to be an awful idea as they are mistaken for another couple, who the mob and other people are after.  This of course leads to car chases, gun fire, Mark Wahlberg without a shirt...the usual fare in these kind of movies...so yeah...the title of the movie was pretty darn descriptive.  

First off, Shawn Levy is a horrible director.  He has directed such awful family fare as "Cheaper by the Dozen"...the beginning of Steve Martin's horrible movie period of his career, "The Pink Panther"...a continuation of Steve Martin's infatuation with making awful movies...this time Beyonce is involved, and the two "Night at the Museum" movies...honestly the only reason to see the first one is for Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, and Bill Cobbs.  With that being said, "Date Night" is a definite improvement over his past movies...which isn't saying a whole heck of a lot.

Whoever is in charge of deciding this sort of thing should have definitely had Tina Fey and/or Steve Carrell write the script to "Date Night."  It would have definitely ended better as they both are hilarious, talented people who have had experience writing comedy...Tina Fey has had more experience in case anyone was wondering.  I could tell you the name of the man who wrote this movie, but it would make no difference because no one has heard of him and for good reason...he can't write...the script was very weak and they were not enough quality jokes or memorable scenes.  This is pretty common with comedies these days.  For some reason people can not make a consistently funny, well written comedy...it boggles my mind.  Very little in this movie makes sense...which is fine...it is an action-comedy...and that's to be expected.

The only reason any human being would ever watch "Date Night" is to see Steve Carrell and Tina Fey.  They were very believable as a couple and successfully played off each other.  Even though they were given mediocre dialogue they were able to make it work pretty well and get basically the only laughs from the entire movie.  Tina Fey flirting with Mark Wahlberg is surprisingly funny, as is Tina Fey and Steve Carrell pole dancing in a strip club...I'm just saying.  The brief scene with Steve Carrell and Tina Fey with James Franco and Mila Kunis (the Tripplehorn's, the couple the Foster's are mistaken for because they took the Tripplehorn's reservations, and then the corrupt cops went after them), was also a funny part in the movie.  The movie ends with some outtakes...too bad there weren't more of them - they were pretty funny and featured Steve Carrell and Tina Fey improvising some lines.  

I feel like I should mention this somewhere...I really have no idea why Ray Liotta was in this movie.  Does he need money that badly?  Have the royalty checks from "Goodfellas" run out?  He plays an extremely watered down version of a mobster in "Date Night."  It's a strange parody or something of his role in "Goodfellas," and he gets to say some pretty terribly written lines...

There was a great cast of actors in the movie.  Apparently that's where the money went...it certainly didn't go into this fun thing known as a script.

"Date Night" could have been a lot better given the amount of talent that was there to work with.  The script was extremely poor, but Steve Carrell and Tina Fey managed to make it semi-work...at least their lines. They should really make another movie together and hope that it's better...or make it better by writing, directing, and possibly producing it themselves.  2 stars...one for Steve Carrell and one for Tina Fey.  


-Joseph Sbrilli