In 1985 Martin Scorsese crafted the superb After Hours, the story of a pencil-pushing dweeb from cubicle land who stumbles into one raucous evening of epic, Rube Goldberg proportions. This is the film to which Date Night aspires, but falls so far short it's a wonder they even bothered trying.
Steve Carell and Tina Fey play Phil and Claire Foster, a nondescript professional couple from New Jersey whose lives have casually slipped into the mundane over the years. They're very much in love, but have had to compartmentalize their affection into a busy schedule that involves work, getting the kids to school, homework, and weekly book clubs.
Life has been quietly passing them by and they've hardly noticed. But notice they do and in an effort to spice things up, the couple pay a visit to a trendy Manhattan eatery where they pooch the reservation of another couple, who, as fate would have it, have connections in all the wrong places. It's from here that Phil and Claire's night begins to spiral out of control in a case of mistaken identity run amok.
Carell and Fey nail their parts as innocent rubes but that's about the best thing that can be said about this tepid affair. The movie plays out as little more than a vehicle for a series of cameos and skits built around such notables as Mark Wahlberg as a perpetually shirtless black ops expert, J. B. Smoove (Larry David's roommate Leon on Curb Your Enthusiasm) as a hapless cabbie the couple literally hook up with, and James Franco (Spiderman, The Pineapple Express) as the low life who got them into their mess in the first place. With so many bit parts relegated to talented players, the story quickly takes on the aura of a script that was cobbled together on the fly, possibly even as the cameras were rolling. The end result is a lack of sincerity and no feeling whatsoever that the story was part of a vision that was created in advance. It's sort of like everyone's winging it, and that's what sets it apart from the Scorsese film it so desperately wants to emulate.
If you really want to see this movie done right, pay a visit to your local DVD palace and rent a copy of After Hours. The time spent with that gem will be far more entertaining than this dreary adventure.
Steve Carell and Tina Fey play Phil and Claire Foster, a nondescript professional couple from New Jersey whose lives have casually slipped into the mundane over the years. They're very much in love, but have had to compartmentalize their affection into a busy schedule that involves work, getting the kids to school, homework, and weekly book clubs.
Life has been quietly passing them by and they've hardly noticed. But notice they do and in an effort to spice things up, the couple pay a visit to a trendy Manhattan eatery where they pooch the reservation of another couple, who, as fate would have it, have connections in all the wrong places. It's from here that Phil and Claire's night begins to spiral out of control in a case of mistaken identity run amok.
Carell and Fey nail their parts as innocent rubes but that's about the best thing that can be said about this tepid affair. The movie plays out as little more than a vehicle for a series of cameos and skits built around such notables as Mark Wahlberg as a perpetually shirtless black ops expert, J. B. Smoove (Larry David's roommate Leon on Curb Your Enthusiasm) as a hapless cabbie the couple literally hook up with, and James Franco (Spiderman, The Pineapple Express) as the low life who got them into their mess in the first place. With so many bit parts relegated to talented players, the story quickly takes on the aura of a script that was cobbled together on the fly, possibly even as the cameras were rolling. The end result is a lack of sincerity and no feeling whatsoever that the story was part of a vision that was created in advance. It's sort of like everyone's winging it, and that's what sets it apart from the Scorsese film it so desperately wants to emulate.
If you really want to see this movie done right, pay a visit to your local DVD palace and rent a copy of After Hours. The time spent with that gem will be far more entertaining than this dreary adventure.