This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of 20th Century Fox. All opinions are 100% mine.
In “Date Night,” the movie release date April 9th, 2010, a bored suburban couple played by stars Steve Carell and Tina Fey go on their weekly dinner date and find themselves thrown into a night of intrigue: there’s breaking and entering, a car chase, a shootout and a showdown with an underworld boss at a strip club. Husband and wife come out of the adventure with some scratches and also with their ardor renewed. You know the kind – think Forgetting Sarah Marshall – one of those movies that are full of little Easter-egg moments that you discover as you watch again and again, and quote endlessly. As a movie that you get in a car and drive to a theater to see? Not so much. Director Shawn Levy and screenwriter Josh Klausner try to heighten the big-screen appeal of Date Night Movie by introducing action-movie elements to the romantic-comedy formula. It has various gunfights and car wrecks, culminating in maybe the most improbable and overlong car chase in recent movie memory. This approach does have its high notes – Mark Wahlberg as a super-studly and ever-shirtless spy – but for the most part it’s just a lot of frantic sound and fury without much comic payoff. In this regard, Levy reminds viewers that he did direct both Night at the Museum films. To the extent the movie works, it works in the interplay between Fey and Carell. As a married-with-children couple trying to avoid becoming just another husband and wife sleepwalking through life, “Phil” and “Claire” try to jazz things up with a night on Manhattan – hip restaurant, maybe a little dancing. But a case of mistaken identity lands them on the wrong end of a gang of corrupt politicians and killers. At one point while scrambling up a fire escape, Claire tells Phil, “Remember, I’m doing everything you’re doing, in heels.” The reference to the famous Ginger Rogers quote is funny and apt: Carell and Fey really are like Fred and Ginger, so smooth and sure-footed in their comic grace (lessness) and timing. The movie also uses some well-placed cameos as comedy booster rockets, particularly James Franco and Mila Kunis (speaking of Forgetting Sarah Marshall) as Taste and Whippit, a pair of low-life lovers who teach Phil and Claire valuable life lessons. Date Night may not set theaters on fire the way an adrenalized shot of transgressive mayhem like The Hangover did. But give it time and repeat broadcasts, and it will likely insinuate itself – Carell, twisting in unmanned discomfort as he tells the buff and bare Wahlberg to “shirt up” – into pop culture consciousness.
