Date Night (2010)
Directed by Shawn Levy
Phil and Claire Foster fear that their mild-mannered relationship may be falling into a stale rut. During their weekly date night, their dinner reservation leads to their being mistaken for a couple of thieves—and now a number of unsavoury characters want Phil and Claire killed.
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And inadvertently set off a “North by Northwest” chain of events that gets them mistaken for lowlifes, and pursued by other lowlifes.
Yes, it shamelessly rips off everything from “The Out-Of-Towners” to “After Hours” to “North By Northwest,” but who cares?
The movie borrows a device straight out of Hitchcock's "North by Northwest."
Unfortunately for Phil and Claire, their impulsive act leads to a case of mistaken identity straight out of Alfred Hitchcock: As in North by Northwest and Saboteur (to name but two), good people find themselves running from dangerous villains while trying to clear their names and escape with all vital organs intact.
In the process, of course, their romance is rekindled from a smokey ember to a burning fire; it's basically North by Northwest cut together with Mr. & Mrs. Smith (not the Hitchcock one).
But before you can say North by Northwest, the Fosters are confronted by two thugs (Jimmi Simpson and rapper Common) who assume that they're the other couple, threatening to kill them unless they give up a flash drive that supposedly contains sensitive information.
And when a case of mistaken identity spirals out of control, they soon find themselves on an adventure that is part "Out of Towners" and part "After Hours," with a soupçon of "The Warriors'" urban odyssey.
Such screwball antics worked for Martin Scorsese in After Hours, but Levy, despite the wit and chemistry of his leads and a killer line-up of cameos (James Franco, Mark Ruffalo, Mila Kunis), manages to make the whole thing feel like a one-season sit-com crammed onto a DVD.
Each crazy step in the bizarre plot made a certain sense because it followed from what went before; it's like the Scorsese masterpiece " After Hours ."
At its best, the movie reminded me of dark comedies from the 1980s like Something Wild and After Hours (or, for a more recent comparison, Pineapple Express ) but it doesn't have nearly the edge of those films.
Date Night, which superficially resembles Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, is too soft to go for the turbulence roiling under this tamped-down marriage.
It’s comedy ground that has been trod before in films like The Out of Towners (1970) and After Hours (1985).
Shawn Levy ("Night at the Museum," "The Pink Panther") does a nice job of moving this action-comedy along, though I'll have to agree with others who've said that, as with Carell's "Get Smart," this script from Josh Klausner ("Shrek the Third") offers more action than laughs.
Director Shawn Levy (Cheaper By The Dozen, both Night at the Museum films) loves the big-ticket car chases, but he has no feel for the smaller moments.
As the director of “Just Married,” “The Pink Panther,” and “Night at the Museum,” Shawn Levy doesn’t strike me as the obvious choice to steer a tricky comedy with some iffy violent and sexual overtones, nor does he immediately pop into view as a proper guide for the domestic side of the screenplay.
Superficially written by Josh Klausner (“Shrek the Third”) and broadly directed by Shawn Levy (“Night at the Museum,” “Cheaper By the Dozen”), the rambling, overly-exaggerated concept lacks even a shred of subversive, sophisticated social satire.
The inventiveness of director Shawn Levy (the “Night at the Museum” franchise) is basically limited to a gag involving a pair of conjoined vehicles.
Then there's the surprise that the Tripplehorns are actually a seedy couple, Taste (James Franco, "Pineapple Express," "Milk") and Whippit (Mila Kunis, "Forgetting Sarah Marshall"), who are genuinely fond of one another.
Lending their comic talents to this wild escapade, are: Mark Wahlberg ("The Lovely Bones") is a former real estate client of our heroine...he never wears a shirt; Mark Ruffalo ("Zodiac") is the soon-to-be-divorced friend; Kristen Wiig ("Whip It") is the soon-to-be-divorced spouse; James Franco ("Pineapple Express") is the REAL guy with the reservation at the restaurant; Mila Kunis ("The Book of Eli") is his foul-mouthed but ever-lovin' spouse; Ray Liotta ("Battle in Seattle") is a wiseguy capo; Taraji P. Henson ("The Curious Case of Benjamin Button") is a cop to the rescue; and Will.i.am (Black-eyed Peas), does a cameo as "Will i Am"... all of whom play it completely "straight," which of course, adds to the comedy.
The brighter rewards of "Date Night" come from brief appearances by James Franco as a stoner dude named Taste, semi-akin to his character in "Pineapple Express," and Mark Wahlberg as a super-smooth shirtless stud named Holbrooke.
At its best, the movie reminded me of dark comedies from the 1980s like Something Wild and After Hours (or, for a more recent comparison, Pineapple Express ) but it doesn't have nearly the edge of those films.
James Franco ups the laugh quotient in a smaller role as a doltish petty crook (picking up where he left off in Pineapple Express ) who trades increasingly bizarre insults with Phil.