Date Night (2010)

In “Date Night,” Tina Fey and Steve Carell play wife and husband, Realtor and accountant, and parents. Tired, rushed and dull, and from suburban Jersey. They are the nameless, voiceless extras you see in the far background of spy thrillers about exotic couples. But in this film, on their one night out to New York, Claire and Phil are the stars. Mistaken for blackmailers at a snobby Tribeca restaurant, Claire and Phil find themselves face-to-gun barrel over a stolen jump drive, and must run from potential killers (Common and Jimmi Simpson). So off they go, across NYC on the run. The great kick of this comedy is that the couple is absolutely out of their element the entire film, freaked by guns and reeking pay phones and car chases. Fey and Carell never lose sight of their characters’ normalcy, and that’s what makes them special. Various cameos pepper the film: Ray Liotta, James Franco, Mila Kunis, Mark Ruffalo, Kristen Wiig, etc., with Mark Wahlberg providing deadpan comedy gold as a shirtless James Bond hunk that normally would have the starring role. A-