Date Night stars Tina Fey and Steve Carrell as a married couple looking to spice up their usual date night but get involved in a black mail scheme involving sex and the mob. Ultimately the film is funny but leaves you wanting more, maybe more than is really possible.
Tina and Steve are great on the their hit shows, The Office and 30 Rock but this is the big screen and Date Night has them trying to be funny in slightly different ways. Steve Carrell is easily type casted in the nerdy, nice, goofy and sometimes clumsy male. Tina Fey is the smart mouthed, un-hip, sexually tame mother. The two are married with kids. They both feel a bit trapped as their marriage has lost that spark. A married couple close to them split and as a reaction they go out to the city instead of the local eatery for a night of fun and adventure. What they get is a night of guns, blackmail, crooked cops and Mark Wahlberg bare chest. They get involved in a black mail scheme that has nothing to do with them but are confused for some one else and the adventure begins. They have to find the couple with the restaurant reservation they stole, the blackmail goods that could solve the mystery and save their hides while alluding, crooked cops and Mark Wahlberg's oily chest.
Date Night has some funny moments, both involving speedy or not so speedy chases. One involving a motor boat, the other involving a spiffy Audi colliding into a taxi cab with hilarity to ensue. Fey and Carrell are fine. Might the movie have been better if they were allowed to improvise or roam free with the script? I don't know. I am not sure improvisation are their strengths. Fey's best talents are as a writer, not an actor or even a comedian. Carrell also seems like someone who best works with set material and is funny when working with quality material like on The Daily Show or The Office, not so much with Get Smart or Evan Almighty. Towards the end of the film, Carrell and Fey are involved in a strip tease scene involving a stripper pole that is humorous but a little bit of a let down. It should be the scene everyone talks about the next day or at the water cooler but it's not that memorable. It might be because the pole dance sequence requires a good sense of physical humor and neither of these two comedian are known for their physical humor.
Date Night is not bad but it is not memorable. The crooked cops chasing the simple married couple from New Jersey might be the dumbest bad guys ever and their stupidity isn't even played up for any amount of humor. None of the one liners are that funny and many of the smartest jokes are after the fact (punchline) jokes. Even the gag reel during the credits is not up to par and displays Fey's and Carrell's lack of ability to improv or do physical humor. If you don't believe me that Fey is nothing special at improv then why was her best character on SNL, a portrayal of herself on the Weekend Update Segments. It is only till recently that she discovered new success as Sarah Palin.
Date Night will go down as one of those movies that could have been so much more but until then will go down as pretty good, well sort of.
No comments:
Post a Comment