As you can probably tell I watch a lot of films :-). I can’t always keep up with reviewing each and every film in lengthy detail, so am going with this mini-review idea.
This one was a cute, funny film about a couple (Steve Carell and Tina Fey) who caught in the humdrum of kids and middle-class life manage to get out by themselves on what is to be a romantic date-night. Trying to get a table at a talk-of-the-town restaurant, and roundly rebuffed, they “steal” some no-show couple’s reservation. Passing themselves off as people they’re not, they get the table allright, but soon are escorted off by goons who think they actually are the other couple. A whole world of trouble awaits . . .
Fey and Carell are laugh-out-loud funny, and the story veers into unexpected corners, which kept up the interest and the charm.
I’d expected better, which is why the rating isn’t 4. Ashton Kutcher(Spencer) and Katherine Heigl (Jen) star as a couple in love. Kutcher is handsome and gun-toting – CIA see ? Of course his wife has no idea, so when he starts to get targeted by some very intent killers (there’s a bounty on his head, apparently), she is quite taken aback. Of course she gets into the swing of things . . .
An entertaining film, although not quite as smart as it could have been. Heigl is her usual simpering self, and her Jen is quite in awe of Spencer’s “physical, godlike perfection”. Spencer is glib and handy with a gun, and the duo must try to run as the most unexpected people come after them.
Dennis Quaid is staid, widowed Professor Lawrence Wetherhold with a grown-up son and daughter. His son is kind-of aloof, and he doesn’t quite get his daughter (Ellen Page). Life is trundling along when two new people enter his life. Wetherhold has to go the ER where he meets Dr. Janet Hartigan (Sarah Jessica Parker), a former student of his who is still smarting from the bad grades he gave her. Also his adopted brother Chuck (Thomas Haden Church) decides to move in with him. Things happen.
Yes, this film is kind of predicatable, but it is also soft, sweet and sentimental. The characters here are fragile and developed well. A satisfying watch, I’d seen this on Netflix Streaming, although it doen’t appear to be available for Streaming anymore (some kind of rotating schedule ?).
