Date Night (7/10)
by Tony Medley
Run time 87 minutes.
Not for children.
In 1970 in “The Out of
Towners,” Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis, a conservative Midwest couple,
take a trip to New York so Jack can interview for a job. They get there
a night early and go out to dinner. Things turn very wrong almost
immediately, resulting in one of my favorite comedies.
Here, Tina Fey and Steve
Carell comprise a boring New Jersey couple who want to take a night out
on the town in New York. The first ten minutes live up to that premise
because it is not only boring, it is trite. There is the inevitable
slice of life dialogue among Fey and her women friends that populate the
worst of the chick flicks, about things like menstruating women. Had I
not had to stay to write a review, I would have been out of there.
Influencing that decision
would have been the fact that this film is directed by Shawn Levy who
has been responsible for some of the worst films I’ve seen this century,
including both “Night at the Museum” horrors, “Pink Panther 2,” which
makes my bottom 10, and “Cheaper by the Dozen.” Despite the appallingly
low quality of these films, some did good box office. “Night at the
Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian,” for example, is 113th on
the all time worldwide box office list at $413 million.
But after Fey and Carell
get all dolled up and con their way into a table at a trendy Manhattan
restaurant, their trip into the city rivals the one taken by Lemmon and
Dennis 40 years ago. Everything goes awry.
I thought Lemmon and Dennis
incomparable in creating the chaos they had to endure, but Fey and
Carell come close. They have a good supporting cast, including Mark
Wahlberg, who appears shirtless throughout (requiring lots of body
makeup to cover up his numerous tattoos) which should appeal to women,
Common and Jimmi Simpson as bad guys, Ray Liotta as a gangster
(surprise, surprise!), Taraji P. Henson (Oscar® nominee for “the Curious
Case of Benjamin Button”), and James Franco and Mila Kunis as a pair of
lowlife crooks. While they are all good, the performances of Franco and
Kunis are award-quality.
This is a funny, romantic
film that had me thanking my lucky stars I’m a film critic because
that’s the only thing that kept me in the screening. If you make it past
the first 10-15 minutes, you’re in for a good time.
April 7, 2010 |