Date Night: Big City, Not-So-Bright Lights
Whenever Hollywood ventures into suburbia, you may have a reasonable expectation that moviemakers will have considerably less sympathy for what they find than they typically do for, say, the average Shiite insurgent or Communist dictator. So Date Night, which is far from a great comedy, but does have enough laughs to make it worth watching on home video or pay TV, does take a surprising stance: That ordinary suburban upper-middle-class family types are nice, normal people who just need a little more sleep and maybe some time to themselves. (At least in the Northeast. Maybe someday soon Hollywood will discover that southerners are not necessarily scary rednecks, or that veterans aren’t all freaked-out malcontents.)
Date Night stars Steve Carell, as Phil the tax lawyer, and Tina Fey, as Claire the real estate agent. They play harried marrieds living in New Jersey whose weekly date night to a local restaurant doesn’t quite satisfy. They love their kids and their home but sex has become scarce (there’s a funny moment when Phil makes meek inquiries about the possibility of putting the moves on his wife — but she’s dressed in a frumpy T-shirt and anyway must first pause to take out a retainer that’s covered in slobber). Their days seem to be eaten away by family chores and even social occasions like a book group aren’t much fun. Their kids dance on their heads at five a.m. By the time they get home from work in the evening, the idea of a romantic night out seems like yet another dull duty.
This is ground that has been staked out by a thousand sitcoms, but a sitcom done reasonably well is a fairly reliable form of entertainment and Carell and Fey make for a convincing couple. They even look alike, as married couples tend to do.
some other conservative reviews of the movie:
http://consigliere5.wordpress.com/2010/04/09/april-9-2010/
I’m sure it’s a cute movie, but Tina Fey is on my blacklist.
“Date Night” is a typical comedy about suburbanites. Put them in an unfamiliar environment and watch them make fools of themselves, as in “The Out of Towners”, “Wild Hogs”, “City Slickers”. Yet, Hollyweird’s comedies about suburbanites don’t libel them as badly as their dramas do. To judge by movies like “American Beauty”, “Revolutionary Road”, and “The Ice Storm”, suburbanites are ridden with existential angst, or Nazis obsessed with guns, or couples in loveless marriages or adulterers who neglect their children. So I don’t suppose “Date Night” is going to ridicule suburbanites any worse than most movies do and much less than some. I still won’t shell out for a ticket to it, though.
This definitely isn’t my type of movie…or any movies about suburbanites. Hollywood ruined that throughout the 90s and 00s for me.
As for Tina Fey, she disgusts me. Even long before the SNL Sarah Palin act i found her to be garbage.
Sounds like a remake of the movie The Out of Towners with Jack Lemon written by Neil Simon of course now it needs action and guns.
Go see Clash of the Titans–it had some nice riffs about all hanging together and fighting for each other–against Olympus.
Nah, I’ll pass. Looks too much like; “What if Michale Scott married Liz Lemon and they had adventures…..”
Tina Fey… feh!
#2, 3, 4 & 7: Same here. Money will not leave my hands to see this re-hashed drivel, particularly since it features Fey, on my blacklist as well, although arhooley, I would disagree that it’s cute.
Perhaps Fey should take a stab at keeping the romance in her marriage alive by living in the wilderness of Alaska for a while.
I wouldn’t pay attention to Tina Fey even if she was growing on my ass.
I saw the movie today and was somewhat entertained. I wouldn’t recommend that anyone pay to see it. I’m getting tired of adolescent male humor, in which the writers think if they put as many female and male anatomy descriptors in the dialogue as possible, it’ll make the scene funnier. The script is utterly infantile at points especially Tina Fey’s lines in the boathouse. The more she rambled about her husband’s *****, the more I squirmed. It was sad.
Will not go to see this. Based on what I have seen from Steven Carrell, I consider him to be about as humorous as a hemorrhoid. Tina Fey? Yet another lame excuse for a Hollywood comedian. Put these two together, and nothing good can come out of it. Virtually all “comedies” being produced now (either of the film or the television variety) are pathetically weak and unfunny.
Love to see the Fey comments (negative). After recently hearing about the new SNL skits I can’t look at her the same again. Mindless Hollywood clone.
….. and of course, “The French Teacher” … another mindless unaware waste of good movie film.
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Jane Hakkinen
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I watched this film last night – in spite of some “reservations” (I’m no Tina Fey fan, either…)
Truth be told, I liked the film. It wasn’t perfect, but it was surprisingly entertaining as a whole.
It successfully blends a romantic comedy and an action movie – don’t be surprised if you find yourself surprised to be enjoying the bulk of it.