Melbourne Central Hotys, 13/04/2010
Status: detras de
Can’t type, too snotty. I’m dictating this to my next-door neighbor from my quarantine cell (my house) to the non-quarantine zone (his place) via a tin can on a string. (I have 78% certainty that these germs can’t travel across string. 78% sounds pretty high. Doesn’t it?)
I can only apologise to the other Hoyts patrons if I gave them what was, when we all laughed together at Date Night the other day, just a little sniffle and what is now something much much more awful. (I’ve seen Outbreak, I know how these things spread.)
Hey, speaking of Date Night (nice segue!)… Dunno ‘bout you, but I’d been underwhelmed by most of STEVE CARELL and TINA FEY’s big screen work (Evan Almighty, anyone?) but am a massive small screen fan. Date Night was somewhere almost exactly an average of their small screen awesomeness and big screen not-greatness.
Phil and Clare Foster are happily (if exhaustedly) married and attempting to keep their spark through regular date nights. On this particular big one in the city, they take someone else’s dinner reservation and a case of mistaken identity has them running all over Manhattan tryin not to get dead.
The script is not particularly funny and devolves into (the bad kind) of silliness by the end, but Fey and Carell bring the laughs despite the material. I like that the whole affair is played dead pan straight, to the pair’s strength. There is no goofy, whacky bad guy (it’s actually RAY LIOTTA, playin it like it’s GoodFellas) or goofy, whacky side-kick, just Fey and Carell, two of the best dead-panners out. Also, there’s the most original car chase since The Blues Brothers.
Okay, neighbor, I think that’s about all I can take, I’m for a lie down now. How do I hang this thing up?
