Susan Granger’s review of “Date Night” (20th Century-Fox)
Tina Fey from “30 Rock” and Steve Carrell from “The Office” make an undeniably funny “boring” couple but the formulaic script for this conventional mistaken-identity romantic comedy lacks originality and relies far too much on their deadpan charm and madcap charisma.
Claire (Fey) is a harried, hard-working real estate agent and her husband Phil (Carrell) Foster is a nebbishy tax accountant. With two rambunctious kids and a house in suburban New Jersey, they worry that their marriage has gone stale, particularly when their good friends, Haley and Brad Sullivan (Kristen Wiig, Mark Ruffalo), decide to split up. So rather than their ritual Friday night out at the local Teaneck Tavern, the Fosters spontaneously head into Manhattan. Arriving without a reservation at Claw, a trendy seafood bistro, they impulsively hijack another couple’s table (“Yes, we’re the Tripplehorns”) and are subsequently mistaken for those people by some goons (Jimmi Simpson and Common) who ambush them into a dark alley outside the eatery, demanding the return of a computer flash drive with incriminating information stored on it. Chaos reigns amid crime and conspiracy, as the Fosters fight for their lives, enduring car chases and shootouts, while seeking help from Holbrooke Grant (Mark Wahlberg), a hunky, not-surprisingly-shirtless, ex-military security expert who speaks Hebrew to his Israeli girlfriend (Gal Gadot). Along for the ride are two heavily tattooed, glue-sniffing kooks (James Franco and Mila Kunis) – a.k.a. the Tripplehorns – and a Mafia mobster (uncredited Ray Liotta). Representing law-and-order are no-nonsense Detective Arroyo (Taraji P. Henson) and a perverse district attorney, Frank Crenshaw (William Fichtner).
Superficially written by Josh Klausner (“Shrek the Third”) and broadly directed by Shawn Levy (“Night at the Museum,” “Cheaper By the Dozen”), the rambling, overly-exaggerated concept lacks even a shred of subversive, sophisticated social satire. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Date Night” is a stale, insipid, silly 6. If you stay for the end-credit blooper outtakes, it’s obvious from their banter that Fey and Carrell could have been far funnier if they’d been allowed to improvise more. Wait for the dvd.
