Tuesday Movie Reviews

Date Night
Starring: Steve Carell, Tina Fey, Mark Wahlberg, Common, Kristen Wiig, Mark Ruffalo, James Franco, Mila Kunis, Ray Liotta
Directed by Shawn Levy

How can a comedy with two of the funniest TV stars teaming up be anything but great?? Actually, that last statement was meant to be sarcastic....but it turns out Date Night was truly a treat to watch. Carell and Fey are a married couple in the burbs of New Jersey. They've fallen into the comfortable stage of their marriage where nothing seems exciting anymore and all is just routine. When they decide to let loose a little by going to a fancy new restaurant in Manhattan, all hell breaks loose. They're mistaken for another couple that has in their possession something a major mafia guy needs. You've seen the trailers, you know there are funny scenes that abound. What the trailers don't show you is a the amazing chemistry that Carell and Fey have. They are fantastically funny feeding off each other, and you know half their lines are ad-libbed. The story is actually quite believable and each scene moves along nicely. There were a few times when I rolled my eyes at the silliness of it all (car chase scene with cab was useless), but I was willing to let these few instances go because of the fun I was having. You have to watch the credits as well...very funny outtakes!

GRADE: B+

The Jonses
Starring: David Duchovny; Demi Moore, Amber Heard, Ben Hollingsworth, Glenne Headly, Gary Cole, Lauren Hutton
Directed by Derrick Borte

A beautiful couple and their two gorgeous kids move into an affluent neighborhood. The house is monstrous, the cars are hugely expensive and each of the family members start rolling out these wonderfully new gadgets...cell phones, lawnmowers, golf clubs, etc.. Everybody else on the block see these things and have to have them themselves. Within the rich community, everybody has to keep up with The Jonses. Only thing is, The Jonses are a fake family, salespeople brought together buy some huge company to sell their wares. Interesting concept, and it works fairly well for about 15 minutes. Then it all falls apart. The movie becomes a Movie Of The Week on NBC or something. All of a sudden one kid falls for a married man, the other comes out of the closet, the "wife" starts to have feelings for the "husband"...someone dies, someone gets drunk and drives...it's terrible. Writer /director Borte totally missed the mark on this film. It should have, and very easily could have, been a straight, balls-out comedy ala Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. As I was watching it all get so melodramatic, I could picture this movie being a great comedy. What a shame. Oh, and Lauren Hutton looked like she died weeks before the shoot and nobody told her...blech!

GRADE: D


Side note...I was going to watch the remake of Death At A Funeral with Chris Rock and Danny Glover, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Not only do I know I'd hate it, but it would have made me very angry as well. There is absolutely no reason to remake a movie that was released only three short years ago, that was absolutely hilarious, and great, and touching, and soooo British. Please see the original and stay away from the new one.