Movies and dates are like flowers and candy. Or
flowers and napalm. Or a tuxedo with the zipper down. Or a French
poodle with rabies.
Many couples who decide to go on a date decide to go
to the movies; it can work out well, especially if one uses some
discretion in choosing the film: Porn, 10-hour Holocaust movies and
— probably should be avoided. At the same time, “Audition” makes a very
useful point: Many people in the movies go out on dates, and the
success rate is abysmal.
That’s because dates — first dates especially — are
fraught with peril. So much can go wrong, in so many deliciously
awkward ways. Whether this will work out to our comedy advantage with
“Date Night” — the Tina Fey-Steve Carell feature that opens Friday —
remains to be seen. Fey and Carell play a married couple, so they sort
of have to go home together at the end of the movie; both stars are
reactive comedians, so the humor might well achieve inertia. It’s also
hard to imagine that whatever goes wrong will be worse than some of the
hope-filled romantic collisions cited (in no particular order) below.
They may not be the worst dates in movie history, but they’re pretty
gruesome.
(Note: “Knocked Up” doesn’t count, only because bar pickups don’t qualify as dates.)
—”After Hours” (1985)
You can kind of tell a date isn’t going well when
one of the participants commits suicide. And that’s just one of the
many, many bits of insanity that the beleaguered
being less user-friendly than it is today — in the process losing his
money, encountering assorted mutants and freakazoids, being accused of
burglary, and getting chased by a mob of angry homosexuals.
—”Spider-Man 2″ (2004)
When the star-crossed
impasse, Doctor Octopus shows up and throws a car at them. What follows
is a battle that roves all over town, atop buildings and subway trains
and involves
—”The Invention of Lying” (2009)
Before their first date is even over,
never work out, and why they’ll never see each other again — in this
comedy set in a parallel universe where everyone tells the truth. All
the time. Which is certainly not the route to romance.
—”The Awful Truth” (1937)
A shiny old chestnut, this rather daring (for its time) tale of adultery stars
smitten by the sophisticated Dunne. After Grant’s date embarrasses him
— by performing a virtual striptease in the nightclub where they all
meet — Grant gets paid back in full, as Bellamy drags Dunne around the
dance floor while performing a kind of demented square dance.
—”Date Movie” (2006)
Where can you possibly begin?
—”She’s Out of My League” (last month)
This movie’s a bit too fresh to have achieved
classic status, but it has potential: When airport security guy Kirk
(Jay Baruchel) brings the gorgeous Molly (
home to meet his baboon-like family, the males drool in unison, the
women can’t disguise their envy, and Molly’s admission that she isn’t
wearing any underwear almost sets the house on fire. Of course, if love
can survive this, it can survive anything.
—”Forgetting
Peter (
they go out to dinner, only to be thrown together again with Sarah and
Aldous in a painful, cringe-inducing meal during which Peter and the
women drink heavily, and Aldous tells them at length about his sexual
philosophy.
—”Must Love Dogs” (2005)
Sometimes, being responsible can be a real drag. So
can a prolonged, agonizing trip to where the movie was obviously
heading all along. When Sarah (
decide to have sex, they don’t have any protection. After a
not-quite-suspense-ridden trip to several pharmacies, they never quite
find any and, besides, they’re out of the mood. So are we.
—”American Pie” (1999)
Let’s see … how do we describe this. … No, there’s no way. Suffice to say that when
their entire, shall we say, interaction (including Jim’s various
malfunctions) gets broadcast to the entire high school via Webcam. A
cautionary tale, to be sure. But so are most date movies.
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WILL THIS BE A HOT ‘DATE’?
The basic concept of “Date Night” — the idea of a
couple’s having to schedule an evening to keep the romance alive —
would seem a bit foreign to the usual target audience for mainstream
romantic comedies, which skews younger and responsibility-free. But not
much about this comedy, directed by
Rock” has been a consistent Emmy winner, and Carell’s “The Office” has
been honored with multiple awards since premiering in 2005 (“30 Rock”
came on the next year).
Both stars made their name in television — Carell on
“The Daily Show” and Fey on “Saturday Night Live,” a program whose
relationship to the big screen has been a bit like that of mad cow
disease to the meat industry. So there’s nothing obvious about “Date
Night,” except perhaps the story line: stolen identities, crazy
characters and the couple’s renewed belief in what brought them
together in the first place. Pass the virtual Kleenex.
What audiences will have to ask themselves is, are
these people funny? In the movies, at least, neither Carell nor Fey has
much of track record: Carell’s “Get Smart” and “Evan Almighty” were
comedically calamitous, and while “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” was a riot,
it wasn’t because of Carell, who has been much more effective in such
films as “Dan in Real Life” or, notably, “Little Miss Sunshine.” Fey,
for all the deft
perpetuates a certain bemusement with the universe and charming
self-effacement, but, hey, “Baby Mama” was a bust. Of course, there’s
always the chance she and Carell will prove there’s power in numbers,
even if the number is only two.
———
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