Review: 'Date Night,' a fine farce - Comedy is hard. Farce is harder. The momentum and lunacy need to keep building. The characters' cluelessness needs to be endearing, but they can't come off as imbeciles — the audience will turn against them entirely. The outrageous hijinks can't be pushed too hard or the whole delicate conceit is apt to collapse into desperate chaos.

Wonder of wonders, then, that Shawn Levy, the director of such middle-of-the-road fare as "Cheaper by the Dozen" and "The Pink Panther," and Josh Klausner, one of 12 credited screenwriters who worked on "Shrek the Third," should turn out to be such gifted practitioners of this very tricky genre in "Date Night."

The film plays like a modern-day variation on Martin Scorsese's night-in-hell comedy "After Hours," complete with mistaken identities, surprise cameos and one of the more deranged car chases in recent memory. That there is a beating heart at the center of all this — a surprisingly sweet "comedy of re-marriage," about a frustrated middle-age couple who find a way to get their mojo back — makes it all the more appealing.

From : http://www.mercurynews.com/movies-dvd/ci_14837449