Date Night

Phil and Claire Foster (Steve Carell and Tina Fey) are a couple that truly love each other, but are a bit worn out by life.  Especially the kids in life, followed by the jobs in life, then the daily chores in life…life is wearing them out.  They still make some effort, though, going out for a weekly ‘date night’ at their local steak house, where they enjoy spending a bit of time together, and laughing at their made up scenarios of the other couples around the restaurant.  These glimpses into their marriage show genuine affection, almost drowned by daily life.

When they find out that their friends, who have sex far more regularly than they do, are divorcing, because they’ve become nothing but ‘excellent roommates’, Phil and Claire are frightened at the familiarity that they see to their own marriage.  They truly love each other, but they feel it’s all to close, and fear that this fate may be breathing heavily upon them.  So, one date night, Claire decides to throw down a bit of a gauntlet, and gets dressed up beyond the normal Friday night.  Nice dress, high heels, makeup and hair.  Phil comes home, sees her, recognizes his wife and the woman he loves in there under that tired though lovely exterior, and vows to take her out for a night on the town in Manhattan, far away from their local steak house and their typical evening.

They drive in to the city, and try to get a table at the new pretentious restaurant of the moment, which anyone who’s ever lived in or near a big city knows is impossible.  So, when the Tripplehorns fail to claim their reservation, the Fosters step in, and enjoy the best risotto and wine of their life.   Unfortunately, the Tripplehorns are low level grifters in over their heads, trying to blackmail some local big wigs, and the big wigs are out to stop them.  Hi-jinks ensue, with mobsters chasing the Fosters around town, trying to obtain a flash drive with incriminating evidence.

I doubt this movie would have worked had Carell and Fey been less funny, but more importantly, had they been less capable of being convincing in their love for each other.   Had they been one of those uncomfortable couples who spend their time sniping at each other, the movie could not have held it up.  But because they are 99% of the time there for each other, with just a few cracks showing, the movie has a warm heart beneath its silly side, and even the darker side of their exhaustion in the face of their lives.   That the cracks were real and honest only strengthened the movie.  So many mothers of young children I know crave deeply for a minute alone, fantasize about some solitude, and do not feel that they have a chance to have it, without little hands all over them.  Little hands followed by bigger hands, and sometimes, though they wish this were not true, they feel the demand on them in similar ways.   So many fathers I know feel shut out by their wife’s desire to do things a certain way around the house, taking the “if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself” attitude, which shuts the husband out of the family, because she doesn’t give him a chance to live up to her standards.  And gosh, even if he didn’t do the dishes when she wanted, how she wanted, if he does them, she doesn’t have to.  Too many women miss this.  Funny to catch it in a comedy like this one.

Really, beyond the thugs and humor (which had me laughing like few movies have recently) this movie is a love letter to couples with children of a certain age, and careers of a certain type…couples who truly do love each other, and want to be together above all else, but who are sometimes worn down by the jobs and cooking and cleaning and planning of everyday life.  And that reality scares them.