Anyone who would stab a chicken nugget with a Sharpie is a bad person.

Date Night
Shawn Levy 2010 USA
Starring: Tina Fey, Steve Carell, Kristin Wiig, Common, Ray Liotta, Mila Kunis, James Franco, Mark Ruffalo, Mark Wahlberg

Regular readers of this blog may be a little shocked to see me reviewing the film Date Night and, to be honest, I'd have a hard time arguing with you. I'm not a fan of Steve Carell and find his semi-dramatic role in Little Miss Sunshine infinitely preferable to any of his comic work. Neither am I particularly partial to Marky Mark Wahlberg, either in his current guise as film star or his past life as part of New Kids On The Block and the Funky Bunch, and certainly not when he is cast because the producers need someone to wonder around with their shirt off. I do like Tina Fey though, which is lucky because she injects the film with a vein of warmth and likeability that's otherwise completely missing and really you'd have to like her to be able to forgive her for making worthless, boneheaded dross like this. The plot, as it is, concerns a long-married couple whose rote, basic but not unhappy romantic life and thirst for an uncommon (at least to them) experience leads them into danger and the uncovering of a criminal empire, which as a premise has potential. Unfortunately the director Shawn Levy has bypassed any of this promise and produced a poorly scripted, wildly implausible narrative full of mistaken identity, confusion and plot-holes, which again would be just about acceptable if the film was a nonsensical, feel-good romp but for 99% of the time it's just plain unfunny, the main joke being that the plethora of murderers, blackmailers and corrupt cops the couple run into can't see a worse crime than the pair taking someone else's reservation at a restaurant, and yet there are unexplored moments that again could work well, the suggestion that Fey's Claire may have had a fling with Wahlberg's Holbrooke and have secret criminal tendencies for one. But unfortunately all the violence, felonies and general chaos the leads take part in are rendered essentially meaningless by the lack of even the slightest of consequences. It's almost like Levy has decided that as long as there's a happy ending no-one will notice. The best (and practically the only decent) scene isn't even a comedic one, it's a conversation where Claire admits to her husband that she doesn't fantasise about other men so much as being alone and responsibility-free. Here as throughout Fey tries hard with the little material she's given but is dragged down at every turn by a worse than ever Carell, who genuinely appears to have the comedic timing of a well-concreted fencepost and is far less useful. Kristin Wiig, Mark Ruffalo, Mila Kunis and James Franco pop up at various points for tiny cameos but only Kunis does anything worthwhile with hers, her foul-mouthed Whippit enlivening the scene she's in then buggering off after ninety seconds never to be seen again. Really it says all you need to know that the most amusing moment comes as part of an outtake reel played over the credits with Fey deviating from the script and improvising better lines than she's had in the previous hour and a half and Carell's mugging being overtaken by laughter. Appalling.


RAPPERS IN FILM