Review: Date Night

When the queen and king of prime-time comedy unite for their first feature film together, expectations run high. Will 30 Rock's Tina Fey and The Office's Steve Carell bring the wit and lunacy of their hit TV shows to the big screen? Or, like Oscar co-hosts Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin, another recent dream team, will they crash and burn for want of clever ideas and a funny script?

Tina Fey andSteve Carell are birds of a feather, and in Date Night, their characters are both endearingly clueless.

We can relax: Date Night is no Baldwin-Martin flame-out. Its a charmingly loopy little romp that largely lives up to its promise. It manages to ring minor variations on Fey and Carells beloved TV characters, while at the same time playing to their core strengths as sketch comedians. Watching Carell and Fey kibitz in their first big scene, you breathe a sigh of happy relief. As Liz Lemon, Feys food-loving 30 Rock alter ego, might put it, the two go together like cream soda and a meatball sub. Theyre so comfortable and familiar that youd swear they were a seasoned comedy duo or a long-married couple, which is what theyre meant to be in this movie.

The screenplay, by Josh Klausner, is essentially Neil Simons nave-suburbanite comedy The Out-of-Towners repurposed as a mistaken-identity action thriller. Carell and Fey are Phil and Claire Foster, a pleasantly boring couple with two small children and a house in suburban Teaneck, N.J. Hes a mild-mannered tax consultant and shes a realtor with a control-freak streak.

Perpetually harried or exhausted, they make a heroic effort to keep their marriage alive by going on a weekly date night. It usually consists of dinner at a local family eatery, where they tuck into an entre of salmon and potato skins while entertaining themselves by imagining what the couples around them are saying.

One night, however, the Fosters decide to live dangerously. They dress to the nines, leave the kids with the sitter and impulsively head off into the wilds of Manhattan, determined to dine at a trendy TriBeCa restaurant without a reservation. When theyre inevitably forced to wait for a table in the restaurants crowded bar, Phil takes another risk by falsely claiming the reservation for an absent couple named the Tripplehorns. (Brace yourself for a series of Jeanne Tripplehornjokes.)

Unfortunately, it turns out these Tripplehorns are a sketchy pair whove run afoul of a Mafia boss (Ray Liotta). He wants a flash drive in their possession and hes sent a pair of goons with astronaut names, Armstrong (Jimmi Simpson) and Collins (the rapper Common), to collect it. Quicker than you can say "seafood risotto," the Fosters evening of high-priced chow and celebrity spotting (Will.I.Am, making an uncredited cameo) has turned into a night of high-speed chases and criminal plotting. Fleeing for their lives, Phil and Claire find themselves tangled in a blackmail scheme that involves crooked cops, a pervy district attorney and Mark Wahlberg as a buff security expert who refuses to put a shirt on.

Wahlberg, cheerfully reverting to his Marky Mark beefcake status, is a delight, as are most of the bit players here. Producer-director Shawn Levy, taking a cue from his successful Night at the Museum comedies, has loaded the picture with stellar talent Liotta, Mark Ruffalo, Benjamin Buttons Taraji P. Henson, SNLs Kristen Wiig. Along with Wahlberg, the funniest support comes from James Franco and Mila Kunis as the real Tripplehorns, a scruffy thief and a skanky stripper whose first names are Taste and Whippit, respectively. (As Taste, a tattoo-flaunting bonehead, Id swear Franco is doing a wicked parody of one of Brad Pitts dim-bulb roles.)

This is not, however, an ensemble comedy like The Office or 30 Rock; Fey and Carell are front and centre throughout. Neither strays far from the personae theyve perfected on television. Phil may not be an idiot like paper-pusher Michael Scott, but he has the same impetuousness and makes the same hilariously inept attempts to be cool. As Claire, Fey is a married-with-kids version of stressed-out career woman Liz Lemon, complete with the food fixation Claire refuses to leave the restaurant without her bowl of risotto, gun-toting thugs be damned.

Fey has already found a great Hepburn-and-Tracy odd-couple vibe with 30 Rock co-star Baldwin. In contrast, she and Carell are birds of a feather. Claire and Phil may worry about their marriage, but its obvious from the get-go that theyre perfect for each other they even walk into glass doors together. And they are both endearingly clueless. Claire isnt sure what a flash drive is and confuses being whacked with being whacked off. Phil, a parent more conversant in Dr. Seuss than the latest pop acts, refers to the Black Eyed Peas frontman as "Sam.I.Am."

Screenwriter Klausner, who worked on the last and forthcoming Shrek cartoons, provides some crisp dialogue, but to judge from the outtakes shown during the end credits, Carell and Fey also did their share of improvising. Early on, when Claire and Phil try to bluff their way back into the TriBeCa bistro, the two actors do a wonderfully wacky send-up of snotty Manhattan hipsters. They top that later with a Showgirls spoof when, trapped in a strip club, theyre forced to perform a ludicrously lascivious pole dance.

The movie has its weak spots. The ridiculous plot has more holes than a slice of Emmental, and the obligatory car chase goes on too long. Also, you wish there was more of the likable Ruffalo and the gifted Wiig, who are shamefully under-used as the Fosters maritally troubled best friends.

Those are just minor quibbles. In the end, Date Night proves true to its title its a perfect date movie for grown-ups. Book your babysitter.

Date Night opens April 9.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBC News.