DATE NIGHT review

The movie practically sells itself: Tina Fey and Steve Carell play a typical, tired married couple who go out on a date that goes wildly wrong. That's pretty much it. If you're any level of fan of either (or both) of the leads, you're probably on board for this, on some level. If you don't care for them, then this movie's not for you. "Date Night" is popular comedy for the masses - ultra-relatable characters in an ultra-implausible situation. The result is lots of chuckles but no real belly laughs.
Shawn Levy, the guy at the helm of the "Night at the Museum" movies, brings his affinity for handling modern comedy actors amid a big budget production to the table, and delivers the kind of enjoyable fluff he was no doubt hired to deliver. The bigger problem is Josh Klausner's by-the-numbers screenplay, kept afloat only by the magnetism and chemistry of the talent on screen.

The story begins before 5 AM as the rambunctious, super-charged children of the slumbering Fey & Carell barge in, jump on their bed, and demand breakfast. For me personally, being the father of two such small children, this wasn't so much a look into the lives of these characters as a flashback to my house, five hours prior. I leaned to my wife and uttered, "This is not funny". Of course the story doesn't maintain this level of relatability - which if fine, except that the laughs never fully materialize, as they should.

What we get is a feature-length wacky chase involving corrupt cops and politicians, built on a case of mistaken identity. Nutty tangets (one of the better ones involves broad-skuzzy characters played by James Franco and Mila Kunis) and non-lethal gunplay abound as Fey and Carell bounce from dot to dot of the plot. Fortunately for these protagonists, they happen to have the wealth and connections (including a dull but shirtless Mark Wahlberg, playing a friendly covert ops dude,) to deal with any jam they find themselves in. (The ultimate jam being a rooftop standoff involving Ray Liotta and William Fichtner - two of the creepiest actors of the 1990s, now reduced to this type of broad clowning.)  Like I said, it's all completely implausible, but that's not the point. The point is that this should placate audiences across the board, particularly when it reaches its ultimate destination as an in-fight movie. That's how airy "Date Night" is. Fey and Carell have an on-screen future together if they want it - let's just hope that the bigs laughs materialize in future projects, because for this date, they apparently left them at home.

- Jim Tudor