A Statement About Date Night

So instead of having a date night this weekend, I went and saw Date Night. With my parents. I couldn't quite figure out which was worse... the fact that I didn't have a date to a movie called Date Night, or the fact that I was so obviously crashing their date night. But I'm tired of writing the words "date night," so I'm done with this little portion of my rant.

The reviews of this film are mostly right. It rates about a C. Without Tina Fey and Steve Carell, it would probably have a D or D-. For realsies, this was not a good movie. The action sequences were weird (and looked like they'd been shot with a home video), and the plot... well... To be honest, less than 72 hours later I don't really remember what the main conflict was aside from titular disastrous date.

Oh, but for the actors, this would have been a film that made $3 opening weekend and probably would have earned someone a Razzie nomination. For example, if the film had featured Jennifer Aniston/Katherine Heigl (they are playing the same roles now, right?) and any generic rom-com hero (I'm looking at you, JamesMarsdenGerardButlerAlexO'Laughlin), it would have been panned, and would surely have only been seen by 16-year-old girls.

Tina Fey and Steve Carell lend something remarkable to the whole proceeding, though-- credibility. Both of them can play regular people with regular problems (in comedy) better than most. They're good looking but not superficially attractive, and we understand why they are together in the first place. The couple they portray in the film has a relationship. It's not exciting or glamorous, and neither of them has a profession that stretches the boundaries of realism (yes, Ashton Kutcher/Katherine Heigl nightmare preview before the film, I'm talking about you).

They manage to wring laughs out of everything in this film that should not be funny (including the fleeing-the-bad guys scene in Central Park) and their much-discussed pole dance is something I will never be able to erase from my beleaguered brain. For better or worse.

Much has been said about Tina Fey's abilities to act and/or whether or not she has any. She doesn't think she does. Haters don't think she does. And as a staunch lover, I'd like to go on record and say I don't think she does, either. What she does have the ability to regulate the degrees to which she plays herself (extreme nerd version on 30 Rock, buttoned-down for suburbia in Date Night), which is actually just fine-- anyone that naturally wry and humorous doesn't need to expand her repertoire by trying on something like an uber-dramatic role. It wouldn't suit her, and we wouldn't believe it. And you know what? As long as she continues to not take anything, including herself, seriously, there's nothing wrong with continually exploring the many facets of Tina Fey herself.

The complete opposite can be said of Steve Carell (have you seen Little Miss Sunshine or Dan in Real Life?) but I don't have the energy to get into that right now.

The moral of the story is that Carell and Fey are worth the price of admission alone. So go see this movie, will you?