Date Night

Tina Fey and Steve Carell play a middle-class married couple whose half-hearted attempts to bring some romance back into their lives plunges them into an absurd little misadventure of mistaken identities. It’s a little like an Alfred Hitchcock yarn that’s somehow strayed into the territory of situation comedy, except that director Shawn Levy and screenwriter Josh Klausner don’t seem inclined to take any of it much beyond entry-level jokiness. The two star comics do what they can with roles that seem made to order, but which in the actual event prove too cautiously hemmed-in. Much of the best stuff in Date Night is the bits you saw in the preview trailers, and there’s only a little consolation in the discovery that the jokes you’ve already seen several times remain just as funny when you come across them again in the actual movie.Feather River Cinemas, Paradise Cinema 7 and Tinseltown. Rated PG-13