Date Night (2010)

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. When life gives a director Steve Carell and Tina Fey, you get Date Night. The film really doesn’t have a lot of issues with itself. Its issue is that it’s a very good comedy film, not a great comedy film. And with your two leads being Steve Carell and Tina Fey, it should be a great comedy film. The film follows a married couple, Phil and Claire Foster (played by Steve Carell), whose lives have become so unbearably monotonous that you wonder how they function. Even their date night has become monotonous to the point of horror. But that changes when they attempt to go to a fancy resteraunt but can’t get a reservation. So they decide to steal someone else’s reservation. It’s really not that bad. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if I find myself doing the same stupid thing twenty years from now. This one harmless decision leads Phil and Clair to be chased by cops, politicians, criminals (including the ones whose reservations they took), and multiple others from downtown NYC. And the cast of all these people are amazing, including Common, James Franco, Mila Kunis, Mark Whalberg, and more. The cast of this film is the best part. They all work together and just are perfect. The problem with the film is that they are caged by the director, who also notably caged Ben Stiller in Night at the Museum. Now, a lot of directors do much worse, but Levy is notable for me because he takes great talent and tones them down. Now, besides that exception, I had a couple good hard laughs in this film. The film’s title is Date Night, but that is the closest thing to a romantic comedy about this film. This is a flat-out comedy, with a decently misleading title. But I really don’t care. If Steve Carell and Tina Fey made Desperate Housewives: The Movie, I would watch it before I watch a sequel to a film like Blades of Glory, which I find pretty funny. That is the power of Steve and Tina.
8.5/10