DATE NIGHT (Shawn Levy). 88 minutes. Opens Friday (April 9). See Listing. Rating: NNN
On NOW’s review scale, three Ns means “entertaining.” Date Night may not be anything more than a mistaken-identity comedy about a New Jersey couple who spend one wacky night being chased through Manhattan by a couple of dirty cops. But as the couple, Phil and Claire Foster, Steve Carell and Tina Fey are the very definition of “entertaining.”
Fey and Carell invest their generic characters with a sense of freewheeling, complementary weirdness. They’re a fascinating pairing. I had no trouble believing them as long-married parents who’ve found themselves in a comfortable rut. They’re interesting people who’ve stopped surprising one another. They still have fun, but now that fun involves going to the same steak house every week to quietly mock the other diners.
Neither actor wanders too far from his or her established TV persona. Phil is a big talker who panics easily. Claire’s a sardonic fussbudget with a frumpy streak. Their rhythms are distinct, but they work together perfectly. They give each other a safe space in which to goof around with the text, and the trust they share as actors goes a long way toward selling the idea of them as life partners.
It would have been nice if they’d been given a movie worthy of their talents, of course. Josh Klausner’s script is nothing special – just one awkward or mildly threatening situation after another – and director Shawn Levy treats the goings-on like one of his Night At The Museum pictures, all chaotic motion and frantic cuts.
With the exception of James Franco and Mila Kunis, who share one great scene as the anti-Fosters, the rest of the cast is largely decorative. Common and Jimmi Simpson scowl a lot as the thugs chasing our heroes through the night. Benjamin Button’s Taraji P. Henson makes disbelieving faces as a good cop trying to catch up. Mark Wahlberg eschews shirtwear as a helpful Greenwich Village security expert and William Fichtner is quietly hysterical as a crusading district attorney with a secret hedonistic life.
But it’s all about Carell and Fey bouncing off each other in increasingly silly ways.
Keep your expectations low. It worked for me.[rssbreak]
