DATE NIGHT is ludicrous, but Fey and Carell make it work

Rating:  Great

Let me propose a scenario. Lets say you want to go out for a nice dinner in the city. You enter the restaurant and the host is a total a-hole. Now you're at the bar. A server keeps calling out the name 'Tripplehorn' and no one answers. Do you: A.) Say you are the Tripplehorns and take the seat; or B.) Do nothing and risk having a lame night. If you chose 'A,' Date Night is the movie for you.

Date Night follows Phil and Claire Foster, a stressed married couple (played by Tina Fey and Steve Carell). We feel for the Fosters. They love each other, but the stress of raising children and working full-time is wearing on them. Worse, their good friends Haley and Brad Sullivan (Kirsten Wiig and Mark Ruffalo) are getting a divorce. Why? Well, they are plain bored of one another. They feel more like roommates than a couple, explains Haley.

Phil and Claire's weekly date nights are a chance to get away from it all, but lately they've been so worn down that they don't even want to go out. Still, they muddle out each week--both fearful of letting the other down. They won't admit that they have problems, but they silently wonder if their marriage will end up up like the Sullivan's. So they drudge out to a familiar steakhouse every Thursday, quietly poking fun at the people unlucky enough to sit near them.

One night, Claire and Phil venture out of their comfort zone and into the city. They steal the reservation of the Tripplehorns, a couple they do not know. The punishment: they are thrust into a ludicrous action cop movie for a night. They get caught up in a gun-filled scandal with corrupt government officials, car chases, crazy plot twists, good cops, bad cops, a lot of running, a flashdrive (or a "computer sticky thing" as Claire calls it) MacGuffin, and fancy Minority Report styled computers. The plot of Date Night is completely nuts, but like The Hangover, we enjoy the ride because Phil and Claire are as bewildered as we are.

Carell and Fey play the Fosters straight. They are normal people. When someone points a gun to their heads, they react like normal people might: they try to escape to a place where there are lots of people. It's harder for murderers to kill you, after all, if there is a crowd nearby. We laugh at Phil and Claire's quirks and quips, enjoying their reactions to events more than the events themselves. Date Night is funniest when Fey and Carell are complaining about the madness around them, trying to figure out how in hell they're going to get out of this mess. We've been there. Perhaps not with a gun to our heads, but we know what they're going through. 

They aren't alone. Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, James Franco, Jimmi Simpson (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia), Taraji P. Henson, William Fichtner, and J.B. Smoove (Leon in Curb Your Enthusiasm) join the fun. These characters all pop in and out of the plot unpredictably, often briefly. J.B. Smoove is particularly memorable as a scared cab driver. This supporting cast does their job: they support and enhance the characters of Phil and Claire. 

I enjoyed Date Night. I'd see it again. It doesn't rebind the book on action comedies, but it writes a good chapter. It's nice to see a comedy that realizes its best laughs come from how much we empathize with its characters. It's not the circumstances that make a comedy, it's how the characters handle them.