By Peter Covino
Entertainment Editor

When Claire decides to dress provocatively one Friday night (Fey is indeed much sexier than that Palin woman she often imitates), Phil is sparked to do something different for a change — have an expensive dinner in Manhattan.
The ultra-snooty restaurant has no place for them, of course, so while waiting in exile at the bar, Phil decides they are the Tripplehornes, the couple not answering the “Tripplehornes, your table is ready” page.

And it proves to be the worst mistake Claire and Phil have ever made, and the entire premise for Date Night.
Within minutes of getting the table, Claire and Phil are escorted to a back alley, they think it is because of their deception, but the reality is the real Tripplehornes have crossed the wrong people, and now the couple is cowering on the wrong end of a gun.

From the opening scene, and the major comic bits throughout Date Night, Carrell and Fey work wonderfully together, recalling the silly antics of Rock Hudson and Doris Day, but on a much more adult, and at times, more perverse level.

The troubles of Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis in that New York City holiday classic The Out of Towners, pale in comparison to Claire and Phil.

After eluding the bad guys with guns, our hero couple do some detective work on their own, and it just leads to more craziness including extended cameo roles by Mark Wahlberg, Ray Liotta and James DeFranco. Wahlberg grabs most of the attention amongst the other stars. He appears shirtless in every scene, playing a techo/security analyst/playboy (he also speaks Hebrew).  Claire, who sells real estate, apparently showed him lots of homes in the Tri-state area, and she is still drooling, when she and Phil ask for his help with their dire need situation. And all Phil can say to the exceedingly buffed Wahlberg is will you please put your shirt on, in every scene.

The premise of mistaken identify has been used countless times before (Alfred Hitchcock and Cary Grant with North By Northwest being the prime example) but it still works well in the right hands, and Carrell and Fey are most definitely the right hands.

But the pair execute even the smaller details well. One of their favorite pastimes is mimicking other couples when they are in restaurants, supplying their own dialogue for the couples at nearby tables. It is as funny as anything else in the movie.
And make sure you stick around for the blooper scenes that run with the closing credits.