"Date Night" resists just about every temptation to turn itself into run-of-the-mill rom-com crap. The setup — mild-mannered out-of-towners mugged by big-city chaos — is not entirely fresh; and there's an overlong car chase that feels extraneous (although it's redeemed by some inventive taxicab inter-mangling). But the picture has so much going for it — especially its top-rank cast and a very witty script (by Farrelly Brothers associate Josh Klausner) — that you're happy to let it lift you up and sweep you away on a gust of pure, sweet lunacy.
It's hard to imagine the movie working as well as it does with any other actors but Steve Carell and Tina Fey in the leads. They play Phil and Claire Foster, a suburban New Jersey couple — he's an accountant, she's a real-estate agent — whose marriage, under constant siege by their two hyper-demanding kids, is growing stale. They've tried to refresh it with weekly date nights at a dull local steakhouse, but these outings have lost their sizzle. So one evening Phil decides to switch things up — they'll drive in to nearby Manhattan for a big-town date night at a trendy new seafood place called (rather brilliantly) Claw. This turns out to be a glittery studs-and-models glamour pit, and since the Fosters have cluelessly arrived with no reservation, they're shunted off to wait at the bar, possibly forever. Then they hear a table being called for another couple, the Tripplehorns; when there's no response, the Fosters announce themselves to be that absent party, and they claim the reservation. This seems to have been a good move, but it quickly devolves into a very bad one.
Carell and Fey are tuned to the same comic wavelength, and their underplayed responses to the uproar that mushrooms around their characters makes the rampant pandemonium seem even funnier. Midway through the breathtakingly expensive meal, Phil and Claire are accosted by a pair of thugs (Jimmi Simpson and Common) who've been looking for the Tripplehorns. Marching the Fosters outside, they demand the return of a flash drive, of all things, that's been stolen from a local crime boss named Miletto (Ray Liotta). Phil and Claire manage to escape the thugs — momentarily, at least — and after much intervening tumult they make their way to the swank condo of one of Claire's old real-estate clients, a high-tech security expert named Holbrooke (Mark Wahlberg). Phil is dismayed to realize why Claire would remember this guy — he's a man of superhero buffness who walks around his home bare-chested at all times. (That Wahlberg manages to invest this character with a certain soulful concern is a tribute to his own low-key comic instincts.)
Holbrooke agrees to help the Fosters track down the conniving couple who call themselves the Tripplehorns: a small-time drug dealer named Taste (James Franco) and his stripper girlfriend, Whippit (Mila Kunis) — who, in a winning script twist, are having relationship problems much like Phil and Claire's. From that encounter, the Fosters move on to pay a disastrous visit to the Peppermint Hippo, the strip club where Whippit works and the mobster Miletto maintains his lair. Here, inevitably, the Fosters attempt to pass as a stripper and her "androgynous friend" — a sequence that might have collapsed into strained idiocy were it not for the stars' happy knack for physical clowning and commitment to their characters' unconquerable sincerity.
The movie has a wonderful comic fullness. Apart from Wahlberg, Kunis and Franco (who's even funnier here than he was in "Pineapple Express"), it's packed with other notable performers in small roles, among them Kristen Wiig and Mark Ruffalo (as the Fosters' divorcing neighbors), Leighton Meester (as their manipulative babysitter), and William Fichtner (as a crusading D.A.). Will.I.Am even puts in an appearance, and Olivia Munn passes through as a frosty restaurant hostess. Director Shawn Levy (of the "Night at the Museum" films) knows how to punch up the picture's many hilarious lines, and working with ace cinematographer Dean Semler, he's given the movie a sleek urban shine. It's a smart, spicy mix. Most rom-coms attempt to leave you with a sappy, feel-good glow; this one leaves you still laughing.
Don't miss Kurt Loder's reviews of "After.Life" and "Who Do You Love," also new in theaters this week.
Check out everything we've got on "Date Night."
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