Date Night

Had I gone into Date Night knowing nothing about the careers of Tina Fey and Steve Carell, I would've come out of it believing that these two actors had appeared in movies together for years. Certainly long enough for the two of them to develop the kind of comedic chemistry that allows them to play directly off of each other to the point that, in many occasions, the laughs are generated more from their reactions to each other than the words they're speaking. That's certainly a testament to the ability of those two, and its the real enjoyment in this film. Date Night doesn't provide a very funny script, a particularly compelling plot, or anything remotely original. What it does provide is a large dose of Fey and Carell, and to be honest, it could have given me more of them and I would've been perfectly happy.

In Date Night, Fey and Carell play Claire and Phil Foster, a perfectly normal suburban married couple with fairly typical suburban married couple issues. They have two children that prevent them from getting any sleep or privacy. They work jobs that are demanding and require a large amount of work with the masses (Phil's a tax consultant, Claire's a realtor). The film never specifies how long they've been a couple, but we can assume that it's been a long time. They're completely comfortable with each other and their less than attractive qualities (Claire wearing a mouth guard and Phil wearing a breathing strip to bed is played for a laugh at the beginning of the movie). The fact that they don't have sex very often seems to bother them, but not to the point that they feel the need to be proactive about it, nor does it seem to be high on the list of concerns. They do things for each other that they don't particularly want to do, but do anyway because it makes the other happy. They try to go on date nights together, but invariably end up at the same restaurant ordering the same food every time. And they're friends with other married couples. One of those couples announces that they're getting a divorce however, and in true Hollywood fashion, this causes the Fosters to take a step back and evaluate whether they're a real couple, or closer to being comfortable roommates. I'm sure that seeing another couple decide to divorce shakes some couples to their core, but I can't remember a movie divorce that hasn't led to another couple having that "what are we to each other" talk that spurs some kind of plot event forward. Anyhow, Claire decides to change things up a little by getting dressed up for their next date night, causing Phil to react by deciding to take them into Manhattan to a new restaurant that Claire wants to go to. Being the naive married couple from the suburbs that they are, they don't make a reservation and are mocked relentlessly by the Maitre D'. Phil makes the snap decision to take another couple's reservation that they no-showed for, and this sets off a string of events that forces the normal, suburban couple into extraordinary and zany situations.


Really, Date Night is a throw-back to older comedic caper movies that don't seem to get made nearly enough these days. The formula's simple. Take ordinary people, throw them into situations that they would never allow themselves to encounter, watch their reactions, chuckle, repeat. That's not necessarily a bad formula or a boring movie, but it relies heavily on the leads' ability to work together and play off of each other's humor. This is what sets Date Night above in its genre. Fey and Carell are brilliant together. That doesn't seem all that surprising, since both actors are hilarious in their own rights and on their own television sitcoms. What's funny on paper doesn't always translate well to the screen, however. Some actors don't work well together. Some just don't mesh. Fey and Carell do. There's not a hint of selfishness between them. No one's trying to out joke each other. They set each other up and allow the other to finish naturally. In that sense, it allows the audience to buy into them being a married couple completely. There's never any lingering, "There's no way they'd ever even fall for each other" thoughts during Date Night. I believe those characters are married. I believe they have been for a long time. And because I believe in them and their sincerity, I'm able to let everything else go and allow myself to be swept away with them. If that bedrock isn't there, a movie like this fails.

And there's plenty of room for this movie to fail. Without Tina Fey and Steve Carell carrying this movie together, I'm certain that I would not have enjoyed it in the least. The script is pedestrian. The jokes are rarely laugh-out-loud funny. There are occasional gems in the writing, but for the most part the bulk of the jokes are sight gags, and rarely do they seem intended. One of the better comedic sequences in the movie occurs on a subway train as Claire is fretting that the dirty cops chasing them (played with appropriate sleaziness by Common and Jimmi Simpson) will "whack them off." The writing in the scene isn't funny. It's a masturbation joke. We've heard it before. What makes this scene funny is the way that Carell reacts to the words coming out of her mouth, the sincerity in which she speaks, and the reaction that she has to his reaction. If any of those things don't work, the audience groans. They did. We laughed until it hurt.

That the movie is directed by Shawn Levy is fairly evident throughout. He's done both Night at the Museum movies, as well as The Pink Panther remake, Cheaper by the Dozen, and Just Married, all blends of action and comedy. All of those movies are very similar in style to this one. That's not particularly a compliment, but it's not a detriment either. Levy handles this material competently. He uses his supporting actors well and knows how to play them against the normal-person-in-extraordinary-circumstances straight men/women. Mark Wahlberg appears as a security/black ops guy that spends most of his time in the film without a shirt, and seeing the differing reactions of the Fosters to his presence is a recurring and rather funny joke. The appearances of James Franco and Mila Kunis as the less than scrupulous couple that the Fosters impersonate to nab their reservation are significantly ridiculous and somehow not at all out of place. It was refreshing to see a role for Kunis that doesn't feel like she's being shoehorned into. These characters are over-the-top to the point that it reassures us of the normality of the Fosters, and allows us to have a chuckle at their inability to process them. What Levy does allow far too often is for the action to derail the film. Date Night is really strongest when it's acting as more of a character comedy, and less of an action comedy. Far too often, Levy falls back on throwing the Fosters into shoot-outs and car chases that, while advancing plot and funny to an extent, become taxing and distracting over time. At the end of the day, we don't care about the plot or how its resolved nearly as much as we care about the Fosters. Levy seems to think it's the other way around, even though the plot is resolved so swiftly that it's almost jarring.

I really hope that future casting directors see Date Night. It would be a shame if this is the last time that we see Fey and Carell in a movie together as a couple. This movie certainly has its flaws, but it's an enjoyable movie experience, and it's certain to turn into one of those movies that I see on cable and have to set the remote down to finish it. It isn't a great movie, but it's certainly satisfying. We owe a great deal of gratitude to Tina Fey and Steve Carell for that.