A married couple accidentally gets caught up in a blackmail plot when they steal someone’s dinner reservation.
The Plot: (spoilers)
Tax advisor Phil Foster (Steve Carell) and his realtor wife Claire (Tina Fey) are in a rut, to the point that for their weekly date night they always go to the same local restaurant and order the same things (and joke about other people in the restaurant).
When they find out that another couple they know is getting divorced, Phil makes a last-minute decision to take Claire to a trendy new restaurant in Manhattan. They arrive at the busy restaurant without a reservation and fail to talk their way to a table. While waiting at the bar for a table to open up, they hear a reservation for the “Tripplehorns” called repeatedly with no response. Phil responds and claims that he and Claire are the Tripplehorns. They take the Tripplehorn reservation and enjoy themselves.
Their meal is interrupted by two men (Jimmi Simpson & Common) who ask them to come with them. Phil and Claire believe they’ve been caught taking someone else’s reservation, but find out that the men are after the Tripplehorns for a flash drive they stole from mafia boss Joe Miletto. The men don’t believe Phil and Claire’s protest that they aren’t really the Tripplehorns.
Threatened at gunpoint, Phil says the flash drive is hidden in Central Park. Phil and Claire are taken to the park and manage to escape. They go to the police station and while giving their story to a skeptical detective, see the two men from before wearing badges. Not knowing who to trust, they leave the police station and try to find the real Tripplehorns.
Phil and Claire return to the restaurant in disguise and manage to get the Tripplehorns’ phone number from the reservation computer.
Claire remembers a former client of hers who works as a security consultant and might be able to help. The Fosters break into a real estate office to get his address and show up at his door. The former client, Holbrooke Grant (Mark Wahlberg) finds an address for the phone number registered to a Tom Felton. The corrupt cops arrive and Phil and Claire escape in Grant’s Audi R8.
Phil and Claire track down Tom “Taste” Felton (James Franco) and his girlfriend “Whippit” (Mila Kunis), who made the reservation under the Tripplehorn alias but spotted the corrupt cops at the restaurant and left. They realize that if Phil and Claire found them, the bad guys are probably on their way, so they go on the run, leaving the stolen flash drive with the Fosters.
Phil and Claire also take off in Grant’s car, fleeing the corrupt cops and crashing into a taxi in the process, which leads to perhaps the strangest car chase scene ever, during which Phil accesses the flash drive and discovers it has evidence that powerful district attorney Frank Crenshaw is also working with the mafia and enjoys the company of prostitutes. By the end of the chase, the Audi is wrecked and the flash drive is at the bottom of the East River.
Phil and Claire realize that Taste and Whippit were going to use the flash drive to blackmail Crenshaw. They return to Grant and he reluctantly agrees to help them again. Phil and Claire go to the mafia strip club Crenshaw visits, posing as a new girl and her pimp. They manage to make their way to Crenshaw’s private room and try to carry out the blackmail scheme. In the end, the police show up and have enough evidence to arrest Joe Miletto (Ray Liotta), Frank Crenshaw (William Fichtner) and the corrupt cops, thanks to Phil, who was wearing a wire thanks to Grant and had notified the police of his plan. Phil and Claire happily return home, having rekindled the romance in their marriage.
My Review:
Date Night doesn’t seem to know if it wants to be a comedy or an action movie, which means it doesn’t do a great job at either. Considering the talent involved, it would have worked much better if it had committed to the comedy. Steve Carell and Tina Fey are excellent and are very convincing as a married couple. The rest of the cast is competent, but Carell and Fey carry the film. It only really works when they get to play off each other, which fortunately they get a lot of time to do. The plot, while necessary to get Carell and Fey from one strange situation to the next, almost seems to get in the way, and the resolution is somewhat of a letdown, as it is predictable and, aside from an awkward pole dance, has little humor. This is unfortunate, because when it is trying to be funny, it succeeds, but then abandons the comedy to resolve a plot that the audience doesn’t really care about. I was left with the feeling that there should have been more. The theme of Phil and Claire’s marriage being in trouble doesn’t help, as it is completely unnecessary, gives the movie a slow start that isn’t particularly funny and also has to be shown to be resolved at the end, leaving the movie to end on a sentimental note with the characters making out in the front yard instead of a humorous one. The humorous outtakes shown over the credits help a little, but not enough. The film needs more of Carell and Fey alternating between panicking and ineptly thwarting bad guys and Carell awkwardly looking on as Fey inadvertently flirts with a perpetually shirtless Mark Walhberg and less of the emotional baggage tacked on to make it seem like the characters needed to go through all this. Why can’t a crazy adventure be just that? Hopefully, Carell and Fey get another opportunity to work together in a project that uses them to their full potential.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
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