Review: Date Night

Loving but overworked married couple Steve Carell and Tina Fey leave their kids with a sitter (Leighton Meester) one night a week to have dinner together, the title ‘Date Night’. Well this one night...it all goes to pot. Having a hard time getting a table at a fancy restaurant but too hungry to go home (sounds like a “Seinfeld” episode to me), they claim to be the ‘Tripplehorns’ when said name is called out, and promptly take the no-show couple’s table. This proves a poor decision as the Tripplehorns are apparently thieves who have gotten on the wrong side of mobster Ray Liotta, who has sent two corrupt cops (Jimmi Simpson and Common) to deal with them. They plead ignorance to the ‘flash drive’ Liotta needs, but the thugs aren’t buying it, thinking they’re pretending to be a mild-mannered couple to shirk responsibility and not get ‘whacked’. They manage to somehow ditch these goons, but now they’re scared and on the run in a New York full of seemingly unsympathetic people. Mark Wahlberg plays a perennially shirtless security expert whose help Fey calls upon, after previously meeting Fey at her day job as a Real Estate agent. Taraji P. Henson plays a bemused cop, William Fichtner is a sleazy DA, whilst James Franco and Mila Kunis are the real Tripplehorns. Mark Ruffalo and Kristen Wiig appear early as friends of Fey and Carell who are finding themselves bored with one another (hence the central couple’s attempts to spice things up so they don’t end up like these two).

This lame Shawn Levy (“Just Married”, “Cheaper By the Dozen”, the quite watchable “Night at the Museum”) comedy from 2010 is one of those films like Scorsese’s 1985 black comedy misfire “After Hours” where someone is beset by all manner of crazy mishaps and experiences, in Murphy’s Law fashion. Unfortunately, talented comedians Carell and Fey (in roles that twenty years ago would’ve likely been played by Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn or in the 60s by Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine) are unable to mine many laughs out of such a tired concept. Worse, the characters they play aren’t particularly likeable. The weird thing is, I don’t think they, director Levy, or writer Josh Klausner (“Shrek the Third”, or as I call it “Shrek 3: The Search For More Cash”) realise just how sad this couple are. I picked up on it early, when Fey and Carell play this game at the restaurant trying to read what was going on between couples at other tables. It’s meant to be funny, but isn’t, hell it’s even a little mean. Ehat really bothered me is that it showed just how sad these people really are. Their lives are so boring, they seemingly have no interest left in one another that they’re having to resort to making smart-arse remarks about how bored these other people are with each other (all in quirky voices that are almost as annoying and unfunny as whenever Whoopi Goldberg goes into her excruciating ‘Valley Girl’ routine). This is either for some perverse form of entertainment for them, or as a way of ignoring their own unhappiness. This early scene never left me throughout the rest of the film. I did not like these people, I didn’t identify with them, I didn’t care about them. I guess we’re meant to be happy that these bored people with boring lives finally get some excitement or whatever, but by that point I had already lost interest in them. I didn’t believe the moment that set the plot in motion, either. This couple are not the type to steal someone’s reservation when they can so easily be found out. I didn’t buy it, a bad thing given it’s an essential plot point.

Some say Carell and Fey show great chemistry here. I disagree entirely. They’re two charismatic comedians using each other as a sounding board for their own individual comedic schtick. That doesn’t make them a couple, simply two people sharing a scene that they’re both probably trying to steal for themselves. Even when Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan face off in “The Trip” series, there’s still chemistry evident between the two. Fey acts acerbic and nerdy, Carell acts weird and nerdy. I’ve found both of them funny and likeable before. Fey had genuine chemistry with Jimmy Fallon and Amy Poehler on “SNL”, albeit ‘best friend’ chemistry. Carell was terrific in “The 40 Year Old Virgin” and “Little Miss Sunshine”. However, they’re way off here, working with subpar material. There’s a few giggles in the scenes between flirty Fey, shirtless Wahlberg, and slightly cuckolded Carell, but other than that, I didn’t really laugh. There’s a fair bit of action, but it’s more noisy than exciting. This isn’t “The Other Guys”, despite the presence of Mark Wahlberg and the mixture of action and supposed comedy. The cast looks great on paper (I tend to lay more of the blame on the director and screenwriter, though I bet the stars ad-libbed a helluva lot), but Wahlberg, perhaps the weakest actor of the lot, is the only one to interest me here with his surprisingly amusing, slightly spaced-out performance. Henson (who looks bored), Liotta (phoning in what could’ve either been a truly funny or truly scary extended cameo), Kunis, and Franco, are especially disappointing in unfunny roles. I guess you could say Fichtner is well-cast, but I wanted to see more of him in the film than we get. And a Jeanne Tripplehorn in-joke in 2010? Really?

Nope, this one just didn’t do it for me, even the outtakes barely had me cracking a smile. It just isn’t funny, and comedies need to be funny, plain and simple. The film runs for less than 90 minutes, but that’s small compensation for what is a genuinely disappointing comedy from people who ought to know better (at least those in front of the camera). Even fans of screwball comedies might find this “Night” a bit of a chore.

Rating: C-