Hola all. Massawyrm here.
Steve Carell and Tina Fey are two of the most talented, brilliant and cutting edge mainstream comedians working today. The idea of pairing them together as a husband and wife team sounds at first to be a no brainer. Imagine, if you will, two self-deprecating comedians, both equally adept at playing smart as they are at playing dumb, working together to forge very believable, three dimensional comic characters entrenched very much in the real world. You have that in mind? Yeah. It sounds like some sort of NBC Must See Comedy wet dream. Of course, the trailer tells a very different story.
From your first viewing of that trailer, any hopes of a clever, biting, witty piece of social satire go right out the window. It doesn’t just look awful. It looks like something you have to hold your nose while swallowing; the narrative equivalent of the MARMADUKE trailer set on repeat for 90 minutes. Memories of THE OFFICE and 30 ROCK evaporate almost instantly, replaced by memories of BABY MAMA and EVAN ALMIGHTY. And that’s exactly how everyone walked into this screening of the film. I know I did. As always, I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best, but really, after having been subjected to the trailer a number of times, I had no hope at all.
So it was a pleasant surprise to discover that the trailer is a lie. Oh, sure, almost everything in the trailer is actually in the film, but they’ve managed to squeeze every last ounce of physical comedy that exists in this film out into a long string of sight gags that are not at all indicative of the subtle humor present in the film. This movie is funny. Admittedly, it is not fall out of your chair funny; it is giggle funny; smile, nod and look at your buddy to see if he got it too funny. Almost every joke in the film asks you to work with it. But those jokes are augmented by the over the top, exaggerated physical gags meant for the cheap seats rather than being driven by them. And while many scenes are funny, every scene featuring Mark Wahlberg is very, very funny. He’s not funny, because he’s playing it relatively straight. But all the humor surrounding his performance as a studly, shirtless, sex machine, ex-military private contractor elicits more than its fair share of laughs.
The film’s core problem, and no doubt the very source of all the negative reviews it will receive, stem from its plot – a clumsy, unimaginative retread of every wild date night/mafia misunderstanding movie you’ve ever seen. This thing was half-baked when we saw it repeatedly in the 80’s, whether it was Keanu Reeves in THE NIGHT BEFORE or Elizabeth Shue in ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING or Bruce Willis in BLIND DATE, you’ve seen this story told again and again, and this time around they don’t for a second dare to stray from a single convention; they’re all present and accounted for. Every flawed element in this film belongs to the plot.
To its credit, the film never gets dull. What works here is that despite your familiarity with the plot, they’ve strived to sharpen it up by running two intelligent but ordinary characters through it; characters that never do the thing they shouldn’t do. They try to do the smart thing, but the smart thing isn’t always a real option. And the film also isn’t so smug as to let the characters forget that this is entirely their fault. A lot of good humor stems from their constant frustration at getting into this mess by doing something kind of douche-y. And it certainly helps that even the most mundane stereotypes - used here mostly as plot devices rather than actual flesh and blood antagonists – are played by a host of talented character actors already adept at playing the roles they’re cast in. James Franco, Mila Kunis, Ray Liotta, William Fitchner and the aforementioned Mark Wahlberg all turn in funny or evocative performances, even when appearing for only a single scene. Even the smallest roles get handed over to vets like Mark Ruffalo, Kristen Wiig, Common, Leighton Meester and Taraji P. Henson.
Sadly, while the cast is in top form, they can only elevate the material so much. This isn’t a great film. It isn’t even a very good one. But it certainly hits what it is aiming at and will get a few laughs out of you along the way. Nothing special, but it isn’t half as bad as it appears to be nor worthy of the slamming it is likely to endure. It is just the passing of 90 minutes, sped up and made relatively painless by a talented cast with some good jokes, dancing around a lame premise.
Until next time friends,
Massawyrm
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