Fewer Stranger Things Makes Season 2 Better!

The Good: Generally good answers to open questions from season 1, Moments of performance (mostly from David Harbour and Joe Keery)
The Bad: Plot-heavy, Derivative, Most of the characters are uninteresting
The Basics: Stranger Things Season Two winnows down the weirdness in Hawkins, IN, and makes for a marginally better season of television than the first.


Unlike many people, I was thoroughly unimpressed by Stranger Things Season One (reviewed here!). The show was packed with science fiction and horror tropes, but when the big revelations for the show came, most of them made no real sense. So, for example, the season was preoccupied with a lost child - Will Byers - who was trapped in, essentially, an alternate dimension that has come to be known as The Upside-Down. Will is eventually shown to have been hiding out in the woods in The Upside-Down. Will's mother, however, receives messages in our world that are apparently from Will while he is lost, including weird horror bulges in her home's wall. There is no correlation, however, to Will sleeping afraid in the woods and being proximate to the house to give his mother messages. So, objectively viewed, much of Stranger Things Season One was a mess. While many people seemed charmed by the early 1980s setting of Stranger Things, that did not "wow" me and I felt no reason to rewatch the first season in the year since it first aired.

As Season Two of Stranger Things begins, there is a burden on the show to provide some actual answers to what was going on in the two major plotlines introduced in the first season. The mystery within Hawkins is concerned with the Upside-Down and the agency of the U.S. government that continues to access it. Will Byers, rescued from the Upside-Down brought back an embryonic life form, which escaped down the drain. The other half of Stranger Things focused on 11, a girl who was part of a secret government experiment and possesses Jedi-like powers. The nature of the girl and the experiments done to her were a mystery that seemed only tangentially-related to the Upside-Down plotline. The second season explores both mysteries, though it continues to do so with characters who are largely uninteresting.

In late October, 1984, Hawkins, Indiana is preparing for Halloween and Will Byers is suffering from post-traumatic stress from his time in the Upside-Down. Jim Hopper starts to see evidence that something is once again not right in Hawkins when Will and his mother visit the government facility in Hawkins, where Dr. Owens tries to convince Will that his recurring visions are flashbacks and part of his trauma. Will periodically appears to step into the Upside-Down (or witness what is going on there) and he sees a massive entity that is comprised of a swarm. When envisioning the Upside-Down one day, the entity swarms into Will and from that point on, he has memories that are not his own, the ability to see within the entity when others visit the Upside-Down (like Jim Hopper) and he reacts when the entity is burned. Dr. Owens studies the entity from the Upside-Down while Joyce struggles to keep Will safe and the rest of Will's friends find themselves hunting a demogorgon that has rapidly evolved from a polliwog into a full-sized monster.

The other major plotline in the second season of Stranger Things focuses on 11, Elle, whose birthname is actually Jane. The season actually opens with the revelation of the young woman with the 008 tattoo involved in crime revealing her powers. Jane has been living in the middle of nowhere, kept safe and educated by Jim Hopper. When she gets upset about how she is kept away from Mike with the excuse that she can see him again when it is safe, she and Hopper have a fight. Jane runs away and goes in search of her mother - with whom she has had psychic contact - after she sees Mike with another girl at school. After finding her mother a virtual vegetable and seeing how she became that, Jane goes in search of others like her. She finds herself among 8 and her crew, on a quest for vengeance against the scientists who experimented upon them and the other children.

The second season of Stranger Things has new characters, most notably Dr. Owens, Bob and Maxine. Dr. Owens is played by Paul Reiser and it compels the actor to, in essence, reprise his role from Aliens (reviewed here!). Owens is a scientist working for the government, taking over Brenner's experiments with the Upside-Down. He helps to "weed" the opening to the Upside-Down and keeps tabs on Will and his health when it becomes apparent that he is connected to the massive entity from the other side. Perhaps the most comforting aspect of Reiser being cast as Dr. Owens is that he manages to defy expectations for his character by not being nearly as slimy as Burke was.

Bob is a love interest for Joyce and he is much more plot-convenient than he is an organic character in her life. Bob works with electronics, is very smart, and loves puzzles. He quickly figures out the nature of Will's drawings when Will inadvertently makes a map of the entity that is spreading beneath Hawkins. Bob has special skills that make him exceptionally useful to Joyce, Jim and Dr. Owens, but it is never clear what bond Bob and Joyce actually have with one another.

Max is a new girl in town and it seems like the directors live putting her front and center in shots, regardless of how important the character actually is to the plot. In fact, the most important moment for Max seems to be that she is around Mike when Jane is at their school, which propels Jane on her own odyssey.

The second season of Stranger Things is riddled with many of the same issues as the first season. Somehow the entity Will brought back remained tiny for almost an entire year, then became absolutely massive over two days. Jim Hopper, Joyce Byers, and Bob enter the Upside-Down and the writers seem to forget that in the first season, it was established that the atmosphere in the Upside-Down was different from our world. Similarly, Jane has been kept isolated her entire life, but when she sees 8 next to a burn barrel, she knows that she is in Pittsburgh?! Even if she saw the skyline, she would have no idea the city.

Stranger Things quickly evolves into Aliens, with a Sith rising b-plot. And, as the season progresses, it is hard for anyone who loved Buffy The Vampire Slayer not to make a mental comparison between the lab in Hawkins and the Hellmouth. But even when big things happen, it remains hard to care about the characters given how generic most of them are.

On the acting front, Stranger Things Season Two is ruled by performances by David Harbour and Joe Keery. Harbour is given a decent arc where Hopper plays parental to Elle and that allows him to play Hopper with more range in a single episode than he was allowed in the entire first season. Harbour rises to the occasion by portraying understated love and realistic anger.

The surprise of the season has to be how impressive Joe Keery is in the role of Steve Harrington. In the first season, Harrington was essentially an antagonist to Jonathan Byers and he was basically a young punk. At his best, Keery rose to moments where he seemed like he was a young Josh Charles. In the second season, Keery is given more to do and when he plays opposite Gaten Matarazzo, he is able to exhibit an impressive sense of comic timing for his often-ironic lines. Keery interacts with the virtual characters amazingly and in a way many actors of any age are unable to.

Ultimately, though, the second season of Stranger Things continues its trend of feeling bloated and plot-centered more than character-focused. The alien invasion style plot menaces a bunch of people who the viewer is likely to find entirely dispensable . . . and a vengeful young woman who seems to be written like a Sith or an X-Men style mutant. The result is a better season than the first, but one that is often just as forgettable.

For other works from the 2017 - 2018 television season, please check out my reviews of:
Rick And Morty - Season 3
"Zari" - Legends Of Tomorrow
"Luck Be A Lady" - The Flash
"Far From The Tree" - Supergirl
"Lethe" - Star Trek: Discovery
"Something Inhuman This Way Comes . . ." - Inhumans
Twin Peaks - Season 3 ("The Return")
Game Of Thrones - Season 7
The Defenders - Season 1
Friends From College - Season 1

5/10

For other movie and television reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Sad, Hilarious, Clever: This Is Where I Leave You Is Like All Of Parenthood In 103 Minutes!

The Good: Amazing acting, Wonderful character development, Good plot development
The Bad: Crowded cast/characters get somewhat underdeveloped, Some of the twists are a little less surprising than they are predictable.
The Basics: This Is Where I Leave You is a wonderful family-centered comedy that involves some of the best actors of the day in a tight series of revelations when the Altman family returns home to try to deal with the death of Marty Altman.


With my wife and I on our first vacation in years, we’ve actually been taking some time to catch up on some of the new movies that we’ve missed. While I went into The Giver blind, we did a double feature and I was able to pick the second film in our double feature. I chose This Is Where I Leave You based on my love of dramedies and by being impressed by the cast. This Is Where I Leave You is clearly Oscarbait and this weekend kicks off the real beginning of Oscar Pandering Season as a result. Unlike last year’s Oscarbait August: Osage County (reviewed here!), This Is Where I Leave You is entertaining, watchable, and worth seeing more than once. All of the hype and potential of This Is Where I Leave You is realized in the film and for those wooed in by the impressive cast of August: Osage County who were left sour by the oppressive tone, This Is Where I Leave You offers a sense of redemption. This film is not (at all) a waste of time.

That is not to say that This Is Where I Leave You is flawless. Just as I have serious issues with understanding what goes on in the head of men who would cheat on Shania Twain or Christie Brinkley (or Eva Longoria or Jennifer Aniston . . .), This Is Where I Leave You forces viewers to buy the premise that a woman with all Jason Bateman has to offer (albeit in his role of Judd Altman) would screw around. While I am becoming more and more of a fan of the works of Dax Shepard, especially because he is pretty wonderful in Parenthood (season five is now reviewed here!), in This Is Where I Leave You, he plays a douchebag and accepting that Judd’s wife Quinn would have a yearlong affair with his misogynistic Wade is a tough pill to swallow. For those concerned about such things: the falling apart of Judd’s marriage is hardly a spoiler; it is the beginning of This Is Where I Leave You, not where the film is going.

Judd Altman manages to get out of work at a reasonable time on his wife’s birthday and returns home with her cake to discover her having sex with his boss, Wade Beaufort (whose radio show Judd produces). Leaving his wife Quinn, Judd moves into his own tiny apartment and when he finally answers a call from his sister, Wendy, he is told that their father has just died. Judd, Wendy, Paul, and (at the very last moment as the funeral is going on) Phillip converge upon their childhood house to try to bring comfort to their mother, Hillary. Hillary insists that Maury’s last wish was for the family to sit Shiva at the house, which seems to be an impossible task given that the four siblings have not been together in years. The initial set-up seems an intriguing mix of amusing and disturbing: Judd has not told anyone but Wendy about Quinn’s infidelity, Wendy’s husband is neglectful, Paul and his wife Alice have been struggling for years to have a child, Philip has started dating his therapist, Tracy, and Hillary has gotten a breast enhancement that only makes her children more and more uncomfortable with her overly forward nature.

But the week of sitting Shiva soon begins to illustrate the cracks in the family that drove everyone apart. Judd is goaded by Wendy into telling everyone that Quinn was cheating on him and he finds Penny Moore, who had an interest in him back in high school never left town. Wendy is abandoned by her husband and she finds that the Altman family’s neighbor, Horry, is still the man she longs for. Judd’s life is complicated by Quinn popping back up, pregnant, which causes a deeper rift between him and Paul. While Phillip cheats on Tracy, Judd struggles to figure out what he really wants in life and how he might best find happiness.

This Is Where I Leave You is similar to Parenthood in that the Altman family is a large family of adult children who are all coming together at the house they grew up in, now with their spouses, significant others, and children and their lives are all in shambles. Unlike Parenthood, This Is Where I Leave You is not hampered with the pretense of servicing all of the characters equally. As a result, most of This Is Where I Leave You focuses on Judd Altman (in fact, only one scene that features Wendy and her mother sticks out as being devoid of Judd in the entire film!). While that might seem to be a weakness – Phillip and Paul are comparatively neglected – it allows This Is Where I Leave You to make a truly rich character journey for Judd Altman.

And Judd is an interesting character. Having played his entire life safe, Judd eloquently notes that he made all of his decisions in life to avoid getting to the exact place that he finds himself in This Is Where I Leave You. Despite Wendy predicting that Judd and Penny might hook up, it is not truly unsatisfying when Judd begins to open up to feeling enough to be interested in her romantically. The viewer wants to root for Judd to have positive experiences and love and the more This Is Where I Leave You, the more the film becomes his story (despite having ample depth given to Paul and Alice, Hillary and Wendy). In fact, only Phillip is really characterized more as a flat archetype or stereotype than a well-rounded character.

The reason This Is Where I Leave You will continue to be talked about as Oscar nominations come down is the powerhouse cast. While Jason Bateman might have given the best performance of his life in the wordless scene at the beginning as he goes through an exceptional emotional range when Judd sees Quinn with Wade, he manages to bring the humor back in scenes like the confrontation with Wade at the hospital later on. Bateman and Tina Fey have amazing on-screen chemistry as brother and sister when they argue flawlessly as siblings are want to do.

The rest of the cast is equally amazing. From Jane Fonda’s performance of Hillary to the way that Debra Monk looks and sounds nothing like she did on NYPD Blue, This Is Where I Leave You is a stunning work of acting. Corey Stoll proves that his watchable quality in the first season of House Of Cards (reviewed here!) was not a fluke and he makes the viewer wish there were more of his character Paul in the film. Adam Driver is decent as Phillip and both Connie Britton and Kathryn Hahn give strong supporting roles as love interests in the film (Hahn and Stoll have great realistic chemistry in portraying an aged romance). Even Rose Byrne’s somewhat quirky role of Penny is enough to redeem her to audiences who thought Bad Neighbors (reviewed here!) was in pretty bad taste earlier this year.

Ultimately, This Is Where I Leave You is funny, with decent chunks of the film exploring a realistic family dynamic that makes it entirely dramatic. Fortunately, the writing, direction and cast make the transitions enjoyable to watch and make This Is Where I Leave You a must-see play-on-film.

For other films currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
10,000 Days
Hit By Lightning
Horns
Listen Up Philip
The Best Of Me
The Judge
Dracula Untold
The Equalizer
The Zero Theorem
Life Of Crime
The Maze Runner
The Giver
The Expendables 3

8/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Of All The Ideas To Get A Sequel...Night At The Museum Makes Me Wonder "Why?!"

The Good: Moments of humor, Decent DVD bonus features
The Bad: Entirely predictable, Premise never develops beyond itself.
The Basics: Predictable and underwhelming, Night At The Museum does not live up to its hype as even an interesting film.


Note: This review was originally written in advance of the sequel’s release. To date, I have not seen the sequel. Enjoy!

Some weeks ago, my wife was in our bedroom laughing constantly as I wrote my daily reviews and I poked my head in to see why. She was watching Night At The Museum and she seemed to be enjoying it. As I prepared for Summer Blockbuster Season, I figured that I would end up seeing the sequel - Night At The Museum: Battle Of The Smithsonian - but through today, I have not. Still, I figured it was worth catching the original, in case I do manage to get out to see the sequel. Despite my wife and I having a lot of differences in taste, I cannot recall the last time I enjoyed a film so much less than she did than after watching Night At The Museum. Moreover, I find myself baffled as to why this film garnered a sequel when it was so generally weak itself.

Night At The Museum is one of those films where the concept is pretty much all there is to the flick. When one knows that the movie is about a night security guard at a museum where all of the inanimate models of people and animals come to life at night, they have pretty much seen the film. Over the course of three nights, night watchman Larry Daley assumes his position at the Museum Of Natural History in New York City where a pharaoh's enchanted tablet animates all of the displays at night. They get up, walk around, talk and torment one another and Larry. Outside a few moments, the movie was nowhere near as funny as I suspected it would be - from my partner's laughter - and on the merits, it is certainly below average.

Larry Daley is recently-divorced and floundering financially in life even as he sees his ex's new boyfriend getting closer to his son, Nick. Determined to not be forced further away from his son by poor job conditions, Larry takes a job at the Museum Of Natural History as the new nightwatchman, replacing Cecil, Gus and Reginald. There he is given specific instructions to maintain order at night and he arrives for his first night not understanding the urgency with which Cecil warns him to not allow anything in or out of the museum at night. When the Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton in the lobby comes alive, Larry freaks out and begins to stick to the list Cecil left him with, despite failing to keep some of the vital conditions straight.

After a day of research, Larry returns to the Museum where he is more prepared to deal with the animals, Atilla the Hun, miniature cowboys and Romans, and a love-struck Teddy Roosevelt. But the power that allows the displays to animate throughout the museum is coveted by those who used to have Larry's job and Larry must marshal the disparate forces in the museum to save the artifacts and earn his son's love and respect.

On the plus side, Night At The Museum does not insult the viewer's intelligence excessively by drawing out the source of the mysterious happenings. In one of the first moments, the former pharaoh's enchanted plaque is introduced and it is quickly revealed to be the source of all of the animated display pieces. As well, Night At The Museum is cute and has a few moments of humor. Unfortunately, of the three big moments of cuteness or humor, the movie gets two of them out of the way quickly. Larry slapping the monkey and the Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton essentially being a cute pet-like creature are established with haste. Outside those two moments, I only recall with any ease one moment that I actually laughed at and that was near the climax of the film. As a result, this is a lot slower than it is funny.

As well, Night At The Museum quickly establishes its premise, but then does little or nothing of real note with it. Everything comes alive at the museum at night . . . all right, once Larry figures out how to deal with the animals and multicultural display pieces, the movie is pretty much over. Thus, writers Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon are forced to create a rather obvious series of conflicts that are hardly engaging enough to keep the viewer interested. The immediate humor of the situation wears out because no matter who Larry encounters, the jokes are essentially either "maquette becomes animated" or interethnic misunderstanding humor.

The real problem with Night At The Museum comes for anyone who has ever been to the American Museum Of Natural History (reviewed here!). Realism takes a back seat to fantasy from the outset in the fact that almost every display is behind glass at the actual Museum. In other words, outside the dinosaur, Teddy Roosevelt and one or two animals, everything in the Museum would be safely contained, just as the pharaoh in the film is. Moreover, places like the Hall Of Ocean would be loud with the sound of water-based animals dying of suffocation every night when they came alive!

The character and plot arcs are stiflingly predictable as well. On the third night, Larry tries to impress the tourguide, Rebecca, and his son by showing the museum pieces coming to life, so the most predictable reversal - the creatures not animating - is exactly where the film goes. Because there is the conflict between Larry and his ex-wife and a distance from his son Nick, the attempt to bond with Nick is met with plot-convenient reversals that lead Nick to be disappointed in his father only to miraculously have that reversed when Nick rises to the occasion.

This is all stuffed together with a somewhat pointless subplot where the Teddy Roosevelt mannequin has a longing for the Sacajawea mannequin. Larry also has a clear desire to impress Rebecca, but fortunately that subplot is not resolved with the predictable potential kiss that would have been even more obvious than where this movie goes. Given that surprise is a key element to comedy, the lack of surprise in the film once one knows the premise guts the film's rewatchability. Even my partner - who was excited about seeing the movie again because we had been to the Museum Of Natural History - laughed less the second time than she did the first time through.

As for the acting, it is hard to deny that Night At The Museum has a pretty excellent cast. Carla Gugino continues her trend of family-friendly flicks in her bit role as Rebecca and Jake Cherry does an adequate job playing Nick. Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, and Bill Cobbs have wonderful supporting roles as the three nightwatchmen who are prematurely retired and Van Dyke especially rises to the occasion with a decent sense of comic timing. Conversely Ricky Gervais is uncharacteristically stiff as the museum's director, Dr. McPhee. Robin Williams upstages Ben Stiller in every scene they share. Mizuo Peck has great chemistry with Williams when she is finally given a speaking part and they share scenes.

Much of the movie hinges on the performance of Ben Stiller and he is good as Larry. In the role, he is required to run fast, bug out his eyes and act as if he is in danger from obviously virtual characters he is sharing the screen with. He does all of that well and director Shawn Levy seems to have a decent sense of how to use Stiller's sense of physical performance to sell the reality of the situation.

Still, it is not enough to let me recommend the movie; the film is slow and predictable with special effects that are not realistic in far too many places. At least it makes my decision of whether or not I ought to catch the sequel an easy one.

For other films featuring Ben Stiller, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Tower Heist
Megamind
Envy
The Royal Tenenbaums
Zoolander
Keeping The Faith

5/10

For other film reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Pink Panther: About As Bad As You're Already Heard (Or Suspect)

The Good: There are moments that are actually funny
The Bad: A lot of slapstick, No great performances, Characters are blah, Resolution
The Basics: Steve Martin's remake of The Pink Panther is unremarkable, but has a few funny moments.


I don't recall what movie I was out watching when I saw the preview for The Pink Panther, but it was one that the preview seemed incongruent with. The person I was with turned to me and said, "If they were going to remake it, Steve Martin is an excellent choice." I had to agree. Then I promptly forgot about it. The Pink Panther was released in theaters, declared one of the worst movies of 2006 and was largely forgotten by me. Then I saw it, which I suppose took some forethought, though it did not feel like it. The bottomline - if you want it up front - is it's about as bad as you might think, but better than you've probably heard.

The ambitious inspector Dreyfus is offered the chance of a lifetime to be awarded the Medal of Honor when a famous soccer coach is killed in front of a stadium of witnesses. Dreyfus decides that the best way he can do this is by having another inspector and the media on the case while he works the case from behind the scenes, allowing for the "official" investigation which he will later discard with his "genius" detective abilities. Dreyfus puts the bumbling incompetent Jacques Clouseau on the case. Almost immediately, Clouseau is bumbling toward the truth with his very capable sidekick Ponton in tow.

While Dreyfus investigates the Chinese - the poison that kills the coach was of Chinese origin - Clouseau investigates the coach's lover, Xania, the star soccer player, the people who did not like the coach and the people who he owed money to. Amidst the murder investigation is the apparent theft of a giant jewel called the Pink Panther diamond, which Clouseau is less diligently searching for.

The Pink Panther is largely a slapstick film, so if you like slapstick, this is probably great. I'm not a fan of slapstick, so watching The Pink Panther was a draining experience for me. It was not terribly clever or funny with the props flying, people falling, ridiculous gags that turned moments into supposed laughter. I generally don't find that funny and this was no exception.

Ironically, the moments when the movie was funniest was when the slapstick was abandoned for such things as wordplay. Clouseau gets in trouble in an airport in the United States and the spinning newspaper montage comes into play with various pictures and headlines. This is funny for the way the publications are portrayed, with the least reputable having the most dumbed-down headline. In short, when the movie wants to be clever, it can be. In fact, unlike some true cinematic atrocities, like The Out-of-Towners, with Steve Martin, The Pink Panther succeeded at moments at making me laugh. But the moments where that was true all had to do with wordplay or concepts that would go above the head of the usual patron of a PG movie. I suppose I'm out of touch with what makes something PG as opposed to PG-13.

Anyway, the moment that actually made me laugh - there were a few where I smiled - involved Clouseau, who has been fawning over Xania the entire movie, being warned that her invitation to her room might be a trap, to which Clouseau responds, "who cares?!" Ahh . . . the cheap laugh of a man willing to die at the hands of a beautiful woman.

But that's pretty much it. Otherwise, The Pink Panther is pretty solidly a dud. None of the characters have a particular amount of character. This is a murder mystery where all the roles are obviously filled. You have the inspector, the ambitious police chief, the girlfriend having problems with her lover, the angry celebrity, the ambitious worker, the business partner who is tired of the failing antics of the other partner. It's all very standard after a fashion. There's even Added Romantic Subplot #12 thrown in to make the movie even more of a cliche.

The movie focuses on Clouseau and Dreyfus, but there are problematic aspects there. Clouseau only proves his worth through unlikely exposition at the very end of the movie. Dreyfus, who sets up the movie, is abandoned for a cheap gag in the flick's last frames. It's ridiculous; Dreyfus sets up the movie. He is telling a story. Yet he does not finish the story. It's disconcerting and sloppy.

The big three performances are all trumped by the straightman. Kevin Kline plays Dreyfus, Beyonce Knowles plays Xania, and Steve Martin portrays Clouseau. None of them shine. Martin and Kline are not playing roles we have not seen them in before. Martin's ability to do schtick wears thin and Kline's arrogance becomes grating. Knowles reminds the viewer that if a musical artist is going to act they ought to either have an excellent role in mind or otherwise have a talent for acting to engage. Were I an actor, Knowles would inspire the reaction I have to people who treat writing like something anyone in the world can do.

The only performance worth watching is from actor Jean Reno. Reno plays Ponton, the straightman to Clouseau's clumsy detective and he does it quite well. Reno is serious and unflinching, playing the role perfectly. So, even though the character is not much, Reno does it well.

Is it worth watching The Pink Panther? No. But if you have kids who like slapstick and fart jokes, it might keep them busy for an hour and a half.

For other works Shawn Levy was involved in, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
Date Night
The Pink Panther 2

3/10

For other film reviews, please be sure to visit my Movie Review Index Page by clicking here!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Date Night Might Not Be This Year's The Hangover, But It's Still Fun!

The Good: Funny, Decent acting, Generally good character development
The Bad: Entirely predictable
The Basics: A lot of fun, Date Night is a worthwhile comedy, despite being largely unsurprising.


Let’s be honest: anyone who saw The Hangover a few years back and loves comedy has been looking for the movie that can be dubbed this year’s The Hangover. As much as one might want, considering how it teams brilliant comedians Steve Carell and Tina Fey, Date Night is not this year’s surprise hit comedy that everyone must see. It is entertaining, it is enjoyable and it even has moments when it is surprisingly smart, but it does not have the same enduring quality or surprise wackiness of The Hangover.

That said, Date Night is a great choice for a comedy film now that it is out on DVD. Why? It is funny and as a PG-13 movie, it is allowed to use the f-word once and it chooses its moment remarkably well. My wife and I made a date of Date Night and I enjoyed it at least as much as she did, in part because she had not seen a single preview and was surprised by the abrupt right turn the movie takes and I had the chance to enjoy her reactions. Unfortunately, for those who have seen the previews, you’ve pretty much seen the film, though there are still plenty of laughs to be had in the full feature.

Phil and Claire Foster are a loving couple who have gotten into the rut that stable marriage with the burdens of children naturally leave one in. They are awakened by their children loudly and Claire’s enduring method of dealing with things is demanding the children stop their bad behaviors by the count of three. The Fosters have a date night at the same restaurant each week where they have the salmon and make up stories about the other patrons of the restaurant before returning home to not make love. After a book club meeting where Claire and Phil separately learn their friends are getting a divorce, they begin to question the strength of their own marriage.

For Phil, this inspires him to bring Claire into the City for a dinner unlike any they usually have and their date night looks like it will be a bust when they go to the trendy new restaurant, Claw, and discover they truly needed a reservation to get any attention, much less service. But, when Phil notices a couple did not show, he and Claire take their reservation and are seated. This takes a turn for the bizarre and horrible when Collins and Armstrong show up, pull them out into an alley and demand they return a flash drive they have stolen. Their lives suddenly in jeopardy from the case of mistaken identity, Phil and Claire set out to try to recover the stolen hard drive and get it back to the mob in order to save their lives and the lives of their children. Aided by a parallel police investigation and a shirtless security consultant named Holbrooke, Phil and Claire struggle to survive their date night.

The mistaken identity plot aside, what is actually the most predictable aspect of Date Night is the character arcs, but it does not lessen the overall enjoyment of the film. Going into Date Night, the viewer knows it is not one of those movies that is going to surprise the audience excessively. So, no matter how many times a gun is pushed in Phil's face, the menace is never so believable that we think the movie is actually going to try to be funny after blowing Phil's brains out. So, of course, the humor comes from how Phil and Claire get out of so many life-threatening situations and the results are often funny in a very cartoonish way. This involves fleeing in a boat and a car chase sequence that is downright entertaining.

As well, the film pokes the usual stabs at politicians and uses its not-Hollywood good-looking protagonist to poke fun at the Hollywood good looks of Holbrooke (played by Mark Wahlberg). For the political humor, William Fichtner plays DA Frank Crenshaw and he is wonderfully smarmy in the role. The DA who is cleaning up the streets with the aid of a prop broom becomes the source of a vast number of jokes in the final act and they work. But once the plot is fully exposed - i.e. what is on the flash drive the mobster wants recovered - there are truly few surprises left. Date Night becomes an almost formulaic comedy kept buoyant on the talents of Steve Carell and Tina Fey.

And in them, director Shawn Levy finds a winning combination, though he mostly uses them to simply play to their strengths. Carell plays deadpan and pulls off manic when he has to, having Phil yell in the face of danger more than once. Fey lights up the screen when she has the opportunity to play straight to her own physical comedy - i.e. removing her saliva-covered retainer or awkwardly pole dancing. She plays a far less intelligent version of herself in Claire, as Claire doubts herself and constantly needs things explained to her, but Fey manages to pull the droning down off and it works. So, Fey is not, for example, simply playing her character from 30 Rock (season 1 review is available by clicking here!).

What truly works are the quiet character moments between Phil and Claire. For sure, the character arcs are predictable from the moment Phil learns that his friends are getting divorced, in part, because they have fallen into a rut. Phil is smart enough to recognize that he and Claire are in a stable pattern and he does what he can to change that. The moments where Date Night allows Phil and Claire to acknowledge both the strengths and struggles that come with being in a stable romantic relationship lends the film a sense of realism that is seldom seen outside high drama and Carell and Fey nail it.

It is also worth noting that Taraji P. Henson makes great use of her few scenes as Detective Arroyo. Arroyo is the police detective the Fosters end up confessing to, before realizing that there are cops on the mob payroll. Arroyo figures out quickly what is going on and even who in the department is at fault. Henson's performance is so good, so deftly executed that the film never needs to stop and have Arroyo say "I suspect you two goons!" Henson's body language and mannerisms are so expressive that we know she is suspicious before she ever makes an accusation.

Finally, for those who go see Date Night, some of the funniest bits are in the closing credits and when Fey gets Carell to laugh in some of the outtakes, it is hard not to die laughing with him. Date Night might not be perfect, but it is solidly entertaining and worth watching, especially for married couples in a rut.

For other works featuring William Fichtner, please check out my reviews of:
The Dark Knight
Crash
The West Wing - Season 5

6/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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