THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

BY RICHARD KNIGHT, JR.

NOTE: Windy City Times originally planned to run a full length review of La Mission, the queer-themed indie starring Benjamin Bratt, written and directed by his brother Peter Bratt, which was scheduled to premiere at the Latino Film Festival on Thursday, April 29. However, festival organizers cancelled the screening, simply stating "scheduling conflicts" as the reason for the cancellation. In its place, here's my review of a film still in theatres: Date Night.

Pair two audience-friendly television stars with stratospheric Q ratings and merging film careers in a familiar, audience-friendly comedy penned by a writer with a reputation for delivering familiar, audience friendly comedies helmed by a director noted for—you got it—none too taxing, familiar, audience-friendly comedies. Add just enough canny laughs, rely on the ability of your stars to deliver enough moments of their familiar though individual, patented comedic schtick and seal the deal with enough offbeat, supporting comic talent to once in awhile throw the audience off kilter for good measure.

The result, starring Steve Carell and Tina Fey, written by Josh Klausner ( Shrek the Third and Shrek Forever After ) and directed by Shawn Levy ( Night at the Museum 1 and 2 ) is the biggest surprise of all. All this calculation actually adds up to if not the greatest comedy, at least what might be the new definition of the perfect date movie. There are enough smart cultural observations to go with the familiar situations to keep things percolating along, a minimum of dumbed down frat boy moments and scatological exchanges, and a recurring bit with a shirtless Mark Wahlberg that will keep the ladies and gay men very happy. Naturally the picture is also called Date Night, but even saddled with this additional bland calculation on the part of the filmmakers, it offers enough star wattage and laughs to recommend it.

Carell and Fey play a happily married couple going through a blah patch. Hemmed in by career and kid demands as they approach midlife, they decide to throw caution to the wind during one of their regular "date nights." ( This scenario will be very familiar to many long-term gay couples as well. ) Instead of having dinner at their usual suburban New Jersey location, they opt for a night at a fancy, trendy restaurant in Manhattan called Claw. In for a penny, in for a pound, they ignore the snippy, gay maitre'd's none too subtle hints to shove off ( a hilarious Nick Kroll ) and end up stealing the reservation of another couple—whom they are then mistaken for, ala Cary Grant in North By Northwest.

An increasing series of calamities ensues. As the fish-out-of-water couple drops down the Manhattan rabbit hole a la The Out of Towners and After Hours, encountering more and more trouble and eccentric characters ( with James Franco and Mila Kunis, the movie's knockout, comedic standouts ) , they find, like Dorothy, that, indeed, there's no place like home. We are rest assured, naturally, that they'll get their, they mojo reignited, once they've gone through a series of humiliating ( and somewhat humorous ) trials that, naturally, will include a visit to a strip club offering both stars a chance to work the stripper pole. That the movie doesn't tax the talents of the stars or the patience of the audience turns out to be in its favor.

Date Night's other surprise—and it's a refreshing one—is that it offers a healthy dose of sweetness in place of condescension, satirizes the overwhelming snark and impatience found in today's culture with a modicum of finesse, and actually manages to deliver these insights to a normally attention deficient audience with just the right amount of knowingness to keep them from fidgeting—something I'd thought inconceivable in this day and age.