Date Night (1010)

Phil and Claire Foster (Steve Carell, Tina Fey) are an average New Jersey suburban couple with two kids.  They have fallen into the same old, same old as far as ther married life is concerned.  When they learn that friends of there have decided to divorce, it shakes them up.  Phil decides that their regular date night -- which has become predictable and humdrum -- needs some thing to perk it up.  He takes her to a fancy new restaurant in Manhattan.

A couple of tough types named Armstrong and Collins (Jimmi Sampston, Common) order the couple out to alley in the back of the restaurant.  They think they are the Tripplehorns (James Franco, Mila Kunis), a couple who has a flash drive with very damaging information.  The Fosters had pretended to be the Tripplehorns when the latter couple did not show up for their reservation at the fancy dancy restaurant.  The two men pull guns on the Fosters, who manage somehow to escape being shot.  When they complain to Det. Arroyo (Taraji P. Henson) NY Police, they spot Armstrong and Collins and figure out they are dirty cops in the back pocket of a gangster (Ray Liotta).  Things get worse for the Fosters from that point. 

There wasn't a big audience in the theater at the time I went to see this movie.  A couple in the back row had a good time, falling out laughing through the entire film.  The rest of the audience, including me, found the story less than mildly humorous.  Mistaken identity plots have been done to death, as well as the variation of the fish-out-of-water storyline presented here.  It was not a good sign when the outtakes that ran at the beginning of the of the end credits and afterwards weren't that funny, either.  As one of the ushers commented after the last outtakes ran, "Now that was a waste of time."

Carell was a lot better in Get Smart (2008) and Little Miss Sunshine (2006).  I haven't watched "Saturday Night Live" (1975-present) in years, so I can't speak on Tina Fey's work there; she was okay in this film.  Ray Liotta was in the classic gangster film Goodfellas (1990).  Taraji P. Henson is an Academy Award nominee for The Strange Case of Benjamin Button (2008).  Mark Walhberg spoofs his former identity as rapper Marky Mark in this film, and Common is actually better known as a rapper.