Date Night

The suburban tax lawyer Phil Foster (Steve Carell) and the real estate agent Claire Foster (Tina Fey) have a boring married life in New Jersey. In their routine, they have once a week the "date night", when they hire a baby-sitter for their children and they have dinner in the same restaurant. When their best friends decide to divorce because of their routine, Phil decides to surprise Claire and have dinner in the fancy restaurant Claw in Manhattan. However, they do not have reservation and is almost impossible to get a table; when Phil overhears the waitress calling Mr. and Mrs. Tripplehorn, he lies and gets their table. Sooner two men invite them to leave the restaurant with them and they believe the invitation is because they took the reservation of a couple that has not shown up. But they discover that the couple stole a flash memory from the powerful gangster Joe Miletto (Ray Liotta) and now they have a serious problem to resolve.

"Date Night" is a funny and entertaining film with a non-original storyline about a mistaken couple that works. Steve Carell and the beautiful Tina Fey are hilarious in the roles of the suburban couple that has a night of adventure for taking the reservation of another couple in a popular restaurant. I believe most of the couples married for a long time will easily understand the situation of Phil and Claire. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Uma Noite Fora de Série" ("An Outstanding Night")

My wife and I spent our date night on "Date Night." Starring two of the funniest people in the American film industry makes this a must-see. And we were not wrong.

The Fosters are a typical middle-income suburban couple with two hyperactive kids. One night, they decide to spice up their date night by going to The Claw, a posh Manhattan restaurant. Desperate for a table, they claim the reservation of a no-show couple called the Tripplehorns (a hilarious homage to the actress Jeanne!). Once that die was cast, the Fosters were then plunged into a night of mistaken identity, crooked cops, double-crossing crooks and blackmail. Of course with Carrell and Fey as the Fosters, this nightmarish scenario becomes a fun rollicking madcap all-night adventure!

Witty lines and zingy one-liners are thrown between these two, and the numerous name actors who make supporting appearances. These include the perpetually shirtless Mark Wahlberg (though that joke did wear thin after a while), and a gruff and dirty James Franco (whose shouting match with Carrell is classic!). The funniest scenes involve two hooked up cars in a frenetic car chase in downtown New York, and a psychedelic dance floor with a pole. Those two LOL scenes alone are worth the price of admission!

With the talents and goodwill of the two lead stars, I am pretty sure "Date Night" will be liked by most audiences. There are a couple of scenes with heartfelt discussions about married life as well in there. This is indeed a perfect movie for a fun date night.

Some movies have great stories told compellingly through technical direction and craftsmanship. These films keep you interested even when nothing important to the story is actually happening on screen. However, some films rely solely on charm and chemistry between co-stars for success. Date Night is not the first film, it looks slick and vacant of anything worth watching except for it's two stars. As casting goes, Date Night does keep you interested with the excellent pairing of Fey and Carell as a married couple. While the script struggles to provide enough clever banter to satisfy, their chemistry and ad-libs are what keeps the film going. Marky Mark, William Fichtner, Mila Kunis and James Franco show up for some pretty funny cameos, while Ray Liotta looks like he stumbled off the set of whatever his last crappy movie was and didn't step out of character. Oh, and Kristen Wiig and Mark Ruffalo are in this for, maybe two minutes. See it if you need to see Fey and Carell together on the big screen, I did

I wonder how many married couples out there can attest to their lifestyle being nothing but revolving around work, family and especially kids, with the latter just sapping whatever free time they have in their waking hours, only to find themselves stuck in a wash-rinse-repeat cycle. The film examines in a comical fashion of course, the lifestyle of the typical family with working parents and young children, and how there isn't anything known as personal time, and having routine becoming the rot in their lives.

For the Fosters Phil (Steve Carell) and Claire (Tina Fey), such is their married life, with spontaneity and energy being sucked so dry, even their regular date nights seem like a chore. You know, that precious night where you think you can paint the town red with a babysitter looking after the kids, and the sad thing being that even that can turn out to be lifeless, save for their favourite game played during dinner, where they adlib what they think about other diners around them.

Which is pretty cool, given that the two comedians, as the blooper reel played during the end credits showed, hammed it up a lot with awesome ad-libbing and improvisation, that never fail to bring on the laughter. In fact, opportunities where they are cut loose and allowed to go really crazy, are some of the best parts of the film, breathing comedic life into a very simple story of how their, well, little white lie in order to get a table at a swanky restaurant, would turn their date night upside down into a crazy urban adventure, filled with thugs, cops, and well, a beefy Mark Wahlberg.

If I had a physique similar to Wahlberg's security expert Holbrooke, heck I'll strut around topless as well all the time, which serves as a running joke about Man's insecurities about the pectorals and abs of another. One of the nicer themes here involves how couples, beside spending time together, have to emotionally connect and be honest and upfront about their desires, and especially fears as well. In between pursuits and comedy, director Shawn Levy pauses the pace appropriately to inject some dramatic elements to sneak in a moment or two to examine just that, before stepping on the pedal to floor the film to its finale.

Like I mentioned, it's otherwise a very straightforward film that doesn't try to be more than it can be, keeping things simple and to the point, with great cameo appearances with the likes of Will.I.Am, Mark Ruffalo, James Franco and Mila Kunis being those instantly recognizable. Carell and Fey share an excellent chemistry and play off each other's antics really well from wit to the timing of their physical comedy, and you'll find yourself rooting for this average, normal couple, to be going one up against their adversaries in a single nighttime adventure, since all they want is to get out of their predicament, and back to their home and children like all parents do.

Stay until the end of the credits if you didn't have enough of the restaurant scene where Carell and Fey pose as arrogant Euro-trash, for additional laughs.

I didn't have any original plans of watching this movie. However, after reading quite a few good reviews of it, I decided to check if my prejudice had been correct. I have been a fan of Steve Carell & Tina Fey for some time, owing to their performances in The Office & 30 Rock. Alas, what they do in this movie is nothing even comparable to what they have achieved on the small screen. The movie is based around The Fosters, a simple family with the basic family problems: too much work, less time with family, a mechanical and repetitive routine, a boring life, annoying kids etc. The movie follows the predictive plot of this couple going out for a quiet evening which steam rolls into a supposedly crazy wild adventure.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to complain about the plot. Its a standard comic flick and not some thriller. I don't expect a revolutionary story but I do expect a few good laughs from the movie which it definitely failed to give me. It mostly comprised of 10yr old kids' level jokes and a whole lot of overacting. But to be fair, I must mention the acting was terrible on almost everyone's part and not just the main star cast.

Maybe its just because of so many movies following the average-person-goes-super path, that this seems so boring and unworthy of spending 2hrs on, but the fact is that people expect more of such a great cast. From corny 1 liners to repeated jokes (Mark Wahlberg's shirt uhhh....), if the things were not overdone so much, the movie may not have been this bad. But nevertheless, I guess I went for this movie with way too much expectations due to the cast. Watch it if you love the leads and have time to kill for some so-so jokes. Don't expect too much & you may just come out without a frown on your face.....