Mild madcap lunacy

DATE NIGHT (2010)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Eddie Murphy once confessed to Barbara Walters that he just "walked through 'The Golden Child'." I feel that the two great comic talents, Steve Carell and Tina Fey, walk through or, more accurately, run through "Date Night" without once convincing us that they are committed to any sort of great script. In fact, the script is so dryly formulaic that there is no surprise, and the two stars are not given a chance to let go and flourish with their comic charm and timing.

A married couple named the Fosters (Carell and Fey) are at a crossroads in their marriage - they are overworked, they have rambunctious kids and, hence, little time or strength for intimacy. They had me at crossroads, at this point, because a movie about a couple played by these two could be mined for great comic potential. The couple going on a date night at a New York restaurant that requires reservations two months in advance also had me in a gleeful state. The glee quickly evaporated, though, when two crooked cops who mistake the couple for the Tripplehorns (not actress Jeanne Tripplehorn), the name the couple steal to get a table, result in one nightmarish scenario after another. Okay, you got me at Tripplehorn, sort of. There is a slow motorboat and bullets flying at the Central Park. Now you got me saying goodbye and wishing we had the madcap lunacy or slapstick of yesteryear by way of Ernst Lubitsch or even Howard Hawks. Then we segue to a shirtless security expert played by Mark Wahlberg and what could have amounted to some madcap lunacy by way of bedroom or sexual shenanigans (Fey is taken with Marky Mark's body) gives way to extraneous car chases, more bullets flying, less comical innuendoes.

Aside from a nicely written scene between Fey and Carell where they discuss their marital difficulties (and a doozy of a scene with James Franco and Mila Kunis), the movie is all noise but very little of it is funny (this is written by Josh Klausner who did a bang-up job writing and directing the little-seen noir, "The 4th Floor"). "Date Night" is a wind-up toy of supposed calamitous situations but precious little of it feels remotely calamitous (the tired subplot of mob-controlled cops wore me out with its weariness). I love movies about all-night escapades ("After Hours" and the vastly underrated "Blind Date" by the late Blake Edwards come to mind) but this movie is too soft, too cutesy, too dry to really score. Carell and Fey (a brilliant writer herself) could've cooked up something far wittier than this. Just check the end credits for proof.