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  Date Night
20th Century Fox
Directed By: Shawn Levy
Starring: Steve Carell, Tina Fey
Purchase Online
Official Website
 

The Short: Date Night isn’t what I thought it was going to be but it still ended up being a decent movie. There are two rules before you watch it- 1) Beware of BD Live on the title and 2) Watch with your spouse or significant other. It’ll be a lot funnier that way.

Date Night features the teaming up of Tina Fey with Steve Carell and it looks like an amazing movie. After all, the two actors are two of the funniest people in entertainment right now. And those two together as a couple… well that should be hilarious. Great ideas aren’t always executed perfectly and sometimes potential isn’t fulfilled; we’ve all learned that over the years. Date Night had potential to be hilarious and although it had lots of funny moments it also had plenty of dry and disappointing moments too.

Date Night follows the Fosters. They’re a couple that’s stuck in a rut. They have the same days and even the same date night every week where they go out to dinner and order the same thing. They see a couple similar to them played by Kristen Wiig and Mark Ruffalo get separated and it gets them thinking about their own relationship. Phil and Claire Foster decide to change things up and insert some variety into their life.

Phil decides to take Claire to Manhattan to the new hot spot of the city- Claw. It’s an amazing restaurant where only the A-List of people in New York are able to get in. There’s a problem though, the Fosters try and get to the joint early enough to get a table but they show up late and are basically out of luck. That’s when the hostess calls out the name of Tripplehorn… and Phil Foster gets crazy and steals the reservation. The two get a table and have an amazing time, until karma bites them back tenfold. It turns out the Tripplehorns are actually a couple on the run from some very nasty people for stealing a flash drive. (Why is it always a flash drive?) They’re confronted by two crooked cops and then the Fosters go on a very crazy trip to save their lives and to get back to the rut they were trying to get out of.

The movie isn’t bad, I like the premise of it and there were several very funny moments. But it’s not altogether relatable. There are several New York jokes in the beginning of the movie that people are only going to get if they live or have lived in New York. Then there are some other just terrible jokes; saying men would listen to a GPS if it had John Madden’s voice? Not that funny. Saying the 1…2…3… rule with kids always works? Definitely not true… and not funny. Those kinds of jokes made Date Night disappointing and Fey and Carell unbelievable and not relatable as a couple. The movie was funny as long as there was action and someone else on the screen, but when it was just the two on screen… it was too dry. There are funny episodes of 30 Rock and The Office. Parts of this movie felt like unfunny episodes of those shows. It’s not a bad movie; it’s just disappointing because it could have been a lot funnier than it turned out to be.

The extras on this Blu-Ray are decent. If you’re viewing this movie on an internet connected Blu-Ray player be warned though… BD Live goes haywire on the release and you can pop this in and get a black screen for several minutes before you’re able to watch the movie. If PS3 owners are experiencing the problem, they should quit playback, delete the data files out of the data utility, restart playback and mess around with the menu and pop-up menu buttons and the controls and you’ll be able to play the movie. I hope that helps.  Playback issues aside, the extras on the movie are decent. There’s a very funny blooper reel and even though BD Live causes some initial problems with playback you get a funny interview between Carell and Fey exclusive to BD Live.

Date Night should have been better. The comedic duo of Tina Fey and Steve Carell ended up having good moments and bad moments. On paper and in promo the two look like the perfect pair for comedy but their styles are too similar and they didn’t play off of each other very well. The moments where it was just them on screen were far too dry. The premise of the movie was good, the plot is fun, and all of the cameos added some needed extra laughs. Date Night isn’t what I thought it was going to be but it still ended up being a decent movie. There are two rules before you watch it though- 1) Beware of BD Live on the title and 2) Watch with your spouse or significant other. It’ll be a lot funnier that way.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


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