dir: Shawn Levy
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Some flicks go out of their way to make you wish you were someone or something else. That’s why most entertainment is considered an escape from the mundanity of the everyday. Lose yourself in the fantasy of being some awesomely bicepped highly skilled dancer / spy / seducer / vengeful mutant dentist, and pay us before you’re done, thanks. Not after, before. No refunds.
Other flicks applaud the fact that you, the viewer, are a mundane mediocrity, whose hopes and dreams have been squashed by life, by your own laziness and timidity, and that you are just as you should be. We, Hollywood, wouldn’t want you any other way. Because if you weren’t just as you are, the perfect consumer who can purchase whatever you want, set your life up just as you want, but still always feel vaguely dissatisfied, then why would you be watching Hollywood’s crap? You’d have no need for us and our special magic any longer. And how would we survive?
Occasionally, only a few times over the course of a lifetime, the Hollywood machine produces a flick that not only applauds the fact that white middle class people feel like there’s a lack of passion and excitement in their lives; a passion and excitement that other people elsewhere are always feeling, but it sets out to say, “Hey, you’re all right. All you need is a little bit of an adventure to get you out of your rut, and then everything will be all right.”
It then seemingly plucks two nobodies, here played by mega-successful comedians Tina Fey and Steve Carrell, but tries to convince us that these two are us. They’ve got kids, mortgage repayments, tough jobs, and all the zing has gone out of their sex lives and general existence.
You know, just like the rest of us. But then, when they’re trying to delude themselves into thinking there’s still a scintilla of passion or meaning in their relationship, and that they’re not just two people sharing expenses and babysitting duties by going to a dinner at a fancy restaurant, something happens. They embark on an adventure, one which will transform them, rekindle their love and passion for each other, and make their entire lives better for evermore.
Yes, I’m being ever so sarcastic, and it’s not as if any of this bullshit matters. It doesn’t matter if it’s somewhat insulting. Hollywood has been insulting its audience from the first day it existed, and it’s never going to change its business model, ever ever ever no matter how many downloads occur or what dreams may come. What matters is whether it’s funny.
Tina Fey and Steve Carrell work well together, they’re funny individually and together, and they’re convincing as comedians even if they’re not convincing as a couple. They’re not at all convincing as an actual couple buckling under the massive pressure of their own averageness and sexlessness.
The reason is that they’re just way too funny. I don’t mean the flick is a laugh riot, or even that tremendously funny a film. On the scale of great all time comedies (I wouldn’t even bother trying to compare it with any ‘classics’ because mileage varies so significantly when it comes to humour), it’s probably a fairly harmless entry in the canon. What it is, though, is a very fleet and brief about people not sucking as much as they thought they did, at least for a while.
Claire (Fey) and Phil (Carrell) Foster get mistaken for two small-time crims by a pair of corrupt cops (rapper Common, who’s a better actor than he is a rapper, and some other guy who doesn’t matter), who are searching for a flash drive containing some incriminating data. The married couple, from New Jersey, then get to spend the rest of the night squabbling about how much the other sucks, in between reassuring each other that not only will everything be okay, but that they individually and together don’t suck as much as the last few decades of their marriage would seem to indicate.
They have to rise ‘above’ their ordinariness by acting in ways their straitlaced lives haven’t prepared them for. But luckily, they’ve watched a lot of movies, so virtually everything they do seems like it would make sense, only in the movies, of course.
In a movie where a couple speeds away from some violent cops using the slowest motorboat in Christendom, let alone Central Park, it’s hard to have high aspirations. The couple, who, at the very least, don’t act like they hate each other, but, in the common trope of Hollywood tripe, are a bit bored with each other because they’ve forgotten just how wonderful the other is, screech a fair bit. They are, after all, meant to be fulfilling the simplistic Women are from Bras, Men are from Penis bullshit that passes for universal familiarity.
And there’s the also common ‘road never travelled, let alone fucked upon’ trope of one person for either of them who represents a sexual ideal that the other no longer provides. For Claire that embodiment of desire is Mark Wahlberg, who spends the entire film shirtless, with a come hither looks pasted across his goof features.
And no, he doesn’t get to whip out the prosthetic cock from Boogie Nights, goshdarnit.
But he does swan around, virile, manly, in charge, helping out the couple (for no earthly reason), mostly because he’s meant to make Phil seethe with jealousy. The onus then falls on Phil to prove he’s manly enough. Not manly as, but manly enough. He has to prove to Claire that he’s not a complete bumbling fool either, and that he can protect her, protect the kids, and see a plan come to fruition all by himself.
The main way he can achieve this is through the least likely car chase – crash in New York history, a town in which such a car chase would be impossible at any time of the day or night, and through acting like the least likely pimp in all of human and animal history.
In short, they reassert their love for each other by acting like total dicks.
I guess that’s what we want, ultimately. The whole Adventures in Babysitting / Eyes Wide Shut / After Hours whitebreads stuck in a city after dark scenario isn’t meant to be plausible, it’s just meant to be entertaining. We’re not for a moment going to wonder if the lovely and highly paid central couple are actually in any danger: we’re just waiting to see what zany and funny thing they’re going to do and say next.
And mostly they come through. I wouldn’t watch it again unless you held a gun to my head, but I did get a fair few laughs. With scripts like this, the majority of the scenario and dialogue is scripted, but they leave a bit of leeway for the protagonists to do a bit of improvisation, and sometimes it fails badly and embarrassingly, but other times it pays off. Carrell and Fey are adept at this kind of thing, and they’re good film comedians (as opposed to decent stand-up practitioners). Carrell can, and does perform roles like this in his sleep, but that’s not entirely a bad thing. They’re all comfortable with whatever they’re doing.
The culmination of the plot in a scene at a secret VIP strip/sex club is ludicrous, but I’m not ashamed to say that I laughed my arse off, with Phil and Claire pretending to be sexy sexy swingers and strippers intending on getting close to a nefarious broom-wielding District Attorney. Their dancing at or on the pole (you know what pole I’m talking about, don’t play coy with me, and it’s not Lech Walesa, that’s all I’m saying) made me weep tears. Maybe not of joy, but of high amusement at the very least.
To its advantage, the flick is also incredibly short. In this dark age where the running times of comedies are increasing along with the egos of their directors (like the absurdly long Judd Apatow-directed Funny People, which was two-and-a-half depressing hours), it’s good to see flicks that know not to outstay their welcome. Any longer and this tale of middle class ennui would have grated, but at 80 minutes it’s hard to hate.
It’s so quick in fact that you can get back to your consumption and possession-fuelled lifestyle in no time flat. You know, that lifestyle in which your renovations and your fixation on gourmet food has replaced your capacity for hot fucking until the day you die alone in that substandard aged care facility where they bathe you in petrol every two weeks to keep the scabies away?
That’s the one.
7 times people shouldn’t be calling other people, especially Ray Liotta, a vagina like it’s a bad thing out of 10
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“I want you to work that pole like a Russian immigrant.” – Date Night.
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