Date Night

Tagline: One ordinary couple. One little white lie.

So I was more than ready to see this movie since I absolutely love everything that Tina Fey touches and I am also a habitual ‘Michael Scott’ quoter. I would have probably seen this comedic duo in almost any movie premise but this plot looked funny enough with the classic mistaken identity rouse.



The plot is fairly basic in that Steve Carell and Tina Fey are a boring married couple from New Jersey who attempt to have a romantic dinner in Manhattan at a fancy new restaurant and take another couples’ reservation after it appears they were a no-show. As they claimed to be the Triplehorns, they are soon approached by two scary men and are then believed to be the couple behind the stealing and ransoming of a very important flash drive. They are then set off on a wild night and get mixed up with the mob, politicians, and corrupted police officers, all with comedy following them the entire time. Rounding out the cast with; Mark Wahlberg, James Franco, Mila Kunis, Mark Ruffalo, and the great Kristen Wiig,


I was very surprised that neither Carell nor Fey were involved with the writing of this movie, given they are both two of the best comedic writers of our time, in my person opinion. Not to mention they are also comedic geniuses onscreen as well. The writer was actually a fairly new face with only really Shrek the Third and Shrek Ever After under his belt, although he did also work on There’s Something About Mary, Shallow Hal, Kingpin, and Dumb & Dumber although not in a screenwriting capacity. The plot was pretty basic yet somewhat memorable with unique characters. It didn’t take the ’suspense’ too seriously and was refreshing with believable and likeable characters. This plot was all about the comedy and used the suspense to build around the comedy instead of using the comedy as a filler along the way, such as in the Bounty Hunter. The screenplay was nicely written but I would attribute most of the humor to the ad-libbing and personas of Carell and Fey. Not sure if anyone else caught the SNL allusion with the annoying couple at the tax office; loved it!


The movie had so much laugh out loud humor that I doubt anyone took notice, but the film was really cheap in this movie. I would suspect that due to most of the budget probably being spent on the awesome cast, costs were cut on the technical side. Also since this is a comedy movie, I wouldn’t really expect any great cinematography, but I still would have expected at least one step up from the cameras used on this movie. The action sequences were done quite nicely and had a really great memorable car chase which was also completely comedic at the same time.


So the movie is a success because of Carell and Fey. They were perfect together and could just throw stuff at each other and came up to bat like the pros, knocking things out of the park left and right. There were so many funny parts throughout the whole movie and even the sincere parts of the movie felt genuine and not forced. Maybe my love for this duo is biasing my opinion, but I thought they did just a great job. I also really loved James Franco and Mark Wahlberg in this movie. I kept waiting for Wahlberg to come out with, ‘say hello to your mother for me’.


This movie totally paid off and was worthy of the number two spot with $25 million on it’s opening weekend. This movie was just constantly funny with so many different types of comedy in it, ie one-liners, physical comedy, awkward comedy, and ongoing bits just to name a few. Pretty much the entire theater was filled with audible laughter. I would definitely recommend this movie out of pretty much all of the movies at the tops of the lists. It will make a great date movie, go figure, but also a good movie for friends or anyone who enjoys good smart comedy. ‘I have potato on my fork. I love potatoes, but see as I move my arm, I don’t ever actually put it into my mouth’ -- Date Movie.