Review: Date Night

It's easy for me to take Steve Carell and Tina Fey for granted. I don't watch them every week on their respective NBC sitcoms, The Office and 30 Rock. I'm just not much of a sitcom fan, so the bulk of my exposure to them has been through movies, for which they both have been pretty hit or miss. Fey, however, is a brilliant comic talent and everytime she's on Saturday Night Live it's basically appointment television. In Date Night, they both show just how great they really are by elevating a pretty tired premise into an enjoyable date flick.

Carell and Fay play Claire and Phil Foster, a boring suburban couple who's marriage has been relegated passing eachother by on the way to work or one of their kids' outings. Romance? Who's got time for it? Any prospect of bedroom shenanigans is easily derailed anytime Claire puts in her mouthguard, or causes a puddle of drool when she removes it. Instant buzzkill.

Claire and Phil aren't clueless. They see what's happening. They don't love eachother any less, but their relationship has changed. When their best friends announce that they've split up due to the romance having fizzled out, Phil decides it's time to take proactive steps to liven things up.  The couple's weekly "date night", which I'm sure was designed to help keep the relationship fresh and vital, has in itself become a chore. So to jumpstart things a little, he decided to take Claire to one of the swankiest joints in town. Without a reservation. Getting a table isn't exactly on the menu, so Phil boldly claims the seats of the missing Tripplehorns. Identity mishaps ensue, and the once bored couple find themselves at the loser's end of a pair of guns and the unwilling participants in a city wide scandal.

Director Shawn Levy, who's spent the last few years making statues come to life in his Night at the Museum movies, is perfectly suited to handling the controlled frenzy of the car chases and comical shootouts that Claire and Phil stumble into. This one isn't going to test your mental mettle, but that's not really the point. The point is to showoff the talents of it's two leads, and in that regard Date Night is a remarkable success.

The most important thing about Date Night is that we actually give a care what happens to Phil and Claire. Not just whether or not they survive the night's events, but if they will survive as a couple. Carell and Fey don't play the roles like two disgruntleds shoehorned into a loveless relationship. Too many romantic comedies, and that's what this is at it's core, fall into that trap of making the couple we're supposed to be rooting for too combative towards eachother. It's obvious from the start and even during the most trying events of the evening that Claire and Phil love eachother and would do anything for eachother. That makes them very easy to cheer on. Even while Claire is drooling over a consistently shirtless Mark Wahlberg as a high tech security agent, we never for a second think she'd act on her obvious urges. 

The supporting cast mostly nails it. The aforementioned Wahlberg is perfect at keeping a rigidly stearn look on his face even while Carell jealously whines over the actor's glistening pecs. James Franco and Mila Kunis steal the one scene they get. It's too bad we didn't get to spend more time with them. They play sortof an amped up version of Phil and Claire, only more....mangy.  And of course I wouldn't be me without bemoaning the presence of rapper Common, who continues to prove that he is incapable of reaching the lowered bar for quality acting that we expect out of musicians. He's just awful.

You're not going to get anything groundbreaking out of Date Night, but you are going to get an entertaining, often hilarious 90 minutes with two of today's funniest actors in remarkably charming roles. Is it worth shelling out an extra few bucks to get your next door neighbor's kid to watch the children for a couple hours? Sure. Why not take your wife to dinner, too? Make a date of it.