People bitch about their daily rituals a lot like the solution isn't totally obvious.
Tired of brushing your teeth in the morning? Well, brush them with Hershey's syrup instead, Mr. Imagination. Or bet the Internet you're so hardcore you can bash out your own teeth with a hammer, then use your winnings to buy some stainless steel dentures. Spice up the drudgery of Spaghetti Wednesday by poisoning one of the meatballs. if you hate making spaghetti that much, accidentally eating the secret hidden treasure will come as a welcome relief.
-- Local show times, theaters, trailer.
The flip side of that coin is some of your rituals are already as awesome as they get. Not to get too far into the male Internet user's venerable pastime of fixating on the bangability of famous women, but as in Date Night, if it's become a deadening task to get slippery with Tina Fey, I don't think there's any hope left for you.
Fey and Steve Carell's marriage has hit a comfortable rut. To shake things up, Carell takes his wife out to dinner in the city, which goes great until they're mistaken for criminals by two armed thugs who try to kill them over a missing flash drive.
Carell and Fey go to the police and learn their attackers are cops, too. Unable to trust the law, they light out through Manhattan to track down the missing flash drive before the killers hunt them down.
I wish Fey and Carell really were married. Twenty years from now, their offspring could make the perfect comedy, a movie so funny the nation's collective abs would be so hardened by laughter you could use them to plate the space shuttle. Despite that, plastic surgery would become the hottest career on the planet after everyone's cheeks explode from overgrinning.
Or maybe those kids would just be the funniest patients in rehab. Ah well. Back in this tragically mundane reality (would somebody invent new-car-trees already?), the pair is at least able to make Date Night too funny to hate on even though I'd like to.
Their improv-heavy, awkward-but-game style rescues a movie that shows every sign of wanting to suck. I imagine director Shawn Levy's advice to his actors went something like "Good, but next time you think you could yell at each other a little louder? I mean, yes, my ears are bleeding, but I'm looking for gushing."
Meanwhile, writer Josh Klausner's running jokes are as flat as a flounder's bluejeans. No amount of outrage at Carell's thievery of someone else's dinner reservation will make me laugh, and you're talking about someone who laughs every time he sees a robot. Incidentally, when Fey and Carell pantomime robot sex, I would have choked on the popcorn I would have stolen from the girls in front of me if they hadn't inconsiderately not bought any damn popcorn.
The emotional angle isn't any stronger than the 60-odd gags about a shirtless Mark Wahlberg. What is older? Stories about married couples who've lost their spark? Or the atoms of hydrogen in the glaze that forms on my eyes when I hear about them? The specifics of Carell and Fey's relationship problems are shoehorned into Date Night without warning or setup, which is nice, because that frees us up to not care about them in the slightest.
Yet despite the tired plot, worthless side characters and half-baked writing, Date Night's a pretty funny film. If I had to guess, I'd say that has something to do with its two leads.
Grade: C+
