Date Night: Shawn Levy

Yes, yes, I'll fully admit that I wasn't looking forward to watching Shawn Levy's Date Night. I remember thinking, "A romantic comedy starring Steve Carell and Tina Fey by the guy who directed the 2006 reboot of The Pink Panther? I'll pass." But much to my surprise, Date Night is a very sweet, very sincere, very smart, and, most crucially, very funny film. It's funny, but the plot of this film reminds me of Anthony Mann's Side Street (1950), a film noir where a good man's life is turned upside down because of a momentary lapse of judgement where he stole something that he thought was insignificant. In Side Street, it was an envelope that the protagonist thought had $200 inside but actually contained $30,000 worth of blackmail money. In Date Night, it's a reservation at one of Manhattan's finest restaurants by the Fosters, a weary New Jersey married couple who want just one special night together so they can recapture the romance that they have been missing. However, they didn't just steal any reservation, they stole the reservation of a couple who had been blackmailing one of the city's crime lords. There are other fascinating comparisons between Date Night and film noir: a very convoluted plot involving corruption and crime, protagonists disillusioned by middle class life, and a dangerous city that hides villains and monsters behind every tree and in every dark alley. I was very impressed by how smart the central story was. The film manages to find very simple solutions to rather bothersome plot holes that seem to plague these kinds of movies. Why don't the Fosters go to the police? Well, they do. It's just that almost as soon as they arrive they discover that two of the policemen stationed there are crooked cops that had tried to kill them. Why don't they stay in crowded areas? Well, they do. That just doesn't stop the bad guys from trying to kill them. Even the stereotypical car chase scene at the end comes about organically from the story instead of from a producer's desire for another action beat. It also helps that I haven't seen an onscreen couple with such great chemistry as Steve Carell and Tina Fey in a long time.

8/10