Tina Fey and Steve Carell star in "Date Night."
Two funny people with great comic chemistry take us for a night on the town in "Date Night."
Tina Fey and Steve Carell are the Fosters, a couple worried that work, marriage and kids have made them stale. They take us to a snooty New York restaurant, and they take us along on an adventure that involves mistaken identity, crooks, crooked cops, car and boat chases, and a visit to a pricey sex-show strip club.
In fact, they take us about as far as director Shawn ("Night at the Museum," "The Pink Panther") Levy will let them. But when all is said and done, this brief, middle-of-the-road, middlebrow giggler lacks the pace or the punch to give us, or the Fosters, a night to remember.
After witnessing the breakup of a couple they know (Mark Ruffalo, unusually animated, and Kristen Wiig), the New Jersey-dwelling Fosters recognize the warning signs in their own marriage -- exhaustion, overscheduled kids, infrequent intercourse. Their date nights have become chores.
Claire (Fey), a real estate agent, decides to get dolled up to break the routine. Phil (Carell), that wild-man tax accountant, takes the bait. "I'm taking you to dinner ... in the CITY." They drop in, sans reservations, at a trendy new seafood place for snobs. When they can't get a table and hear names of folks who haven't shown up called out, the Fosters assume the identities of a no-show couple, the Tripplehorns. But before they make it to the dessert menu, all Hell's Kitchen breaks loose.
Best running gag? Everybody -- from the crooks who refuse to believe they're not who they said they were, to the cops who hear their story, to the real Tripplehorns (James Franco and Mila Kunis, a hoot) -- is shocked, absolutely shocked, that they'd take somebody else's reservation.
"What kind of people DO that?"
Even Claire's helpful former real-estate client (Mark Walhberg), a guy who has a handy "black ops" security background, is put out.
The Fosters swipe a car, a motorboat, clothes and identities, all in an effort to make the bad guy (Ray Liotta) see that they're not the cunning criminals he and his minions think they are.
Fey flirts and Carell kvetches. Walhberg goes shirtless and Liotta eats Italian. No surprises there.
What really clicks is the couple at the core. "Shrek" screenwriter Josh Klausner may not have had enough jokes and Fey, the funniest person on the set, may not have felt like helping. But the Fosters' reality of exhausting, sex-inhibiting family life will have more than a few couples at "Date Night" wincing (and grinning) in recognition.
Without giving away the ending, Steve Carell and Tina Fey�s �Date Night� closes with a four-and-a-half minute kiss � an embrace Steve called �pure heaven.�
�That was on the second day of shooting,� the actor told Access Hollywood at the New York premiere of his new film on Tuesday night. �Tina had the idea to have the longest kiss to roll over credits in history. We were talking to each other the whole time, we never broke the kiss but we were talking out of the sides of our mouths. �Now, I�m going to lie down, follow me, right, get on top of me.��
While Steve may have enjoyed the moment, Tina joked with Access that the scene �was not erotic at all.�
The two comedians also had a difference of opinion on whether or not Tina was a diva on the set.
�Yes, now that I finally am on camera, I�m just going to say it, she�s a horror show,� Steve joked. �[No,] she lived up to every expectation that I had, and more.�
�You know what it is, he doesn�t understand what the word means,� Tina said of the �diva� question. �He just thinks it means fancy.�
While the two NBC stars may seem like a big-screen match made in heaven, Steve told Access that he didn�t think his �The Office� would ever crossover with Tina�s �30 Rock.�
�Never will happen � ever,� he said emphatically, joking it was the �worst idea.� �I think they exist right next to each other perfectly. That would be a weird melding of worlds.�
�Date Night� hits theaters on Friday.
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