On my road to playing catch-up, I decided to check out the Carrell/Fey comedy Date Night next.  Regrettably, it's a lot less funny than I was hoping it would be.  Coming off of the lackluster "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian", Shawn Levy doesn't fare much better here, with a tepid screenplay and generally uninspired direction.  Maybe the PG-13 rating makes it so, but the entire thing feels severely inhibited - like a good idea that's bubbling at the surface, but simmers and dies before it ever reaches a boil.  As funny as Fey and Carrell can be, they're far from hitting their strides here, and as the wishy-washy Fosters, they're really only left to flounder about meaninglessly.  You can't even claim them to be a Mr. & Mrs. Smith Lite, since the action never gets that involved or underway.

The film actually works best when the supporting cast bounces off of the two main stars; Wahlberg reins in an uncharacterically easy-going performance as Holbrooke Grant, while the meeting with the morally ambiguous Tripplehorns played by Mila Kunis and James Franco is comedy at its white trash basest.  William Fichtner plays one heck of an entertainingly sleazy D.A., while the very best scene involves J.B. Smoove as an Amazon Kindle touting taxi driver.  "And In The Morning, We Walk With the Birds of Change", indeed.