From Must-See TV to Must-Rent DVD

Date Night

**1/2 out of ****

Directed by: Shawn Levy

Starring: Steve Carell, Tina Fey, Mark Wahlberg, Taraji P. Henson and James Franco

Running time: 88 minutes

There’s an old saying that goes: “Comics say funny things. Comic actors say things funny.” This sentiment mirrors my thoughts on Date Night, a DOA comedy that is defibrillated with gusto by its headliners and a terrific ensemble cast

The film doesn't have a lot of laughs going for it, with its hackneyed premise and stale jokes. But NBC darlings Steve Carell and Tina Fey, alongside the richest pickings off the character-actor tree, manage to pack some juicy laughs even when they’re unwarranted.

John Klausner, the screenwriter, isn't much of a comic talent, but thankfully his excellent comic actors do their best to rescue his efforts.

Carell and Fey are Phil and Claire Foster, two affable but boring New Jersey suburbanites (who should not be confused with Phil and Claire Dunphy, the sweetheart couple on ABC's Modern Family).

When their close friends (Mark Ruffalo and Kristen Wiig) decide to split up, the two begin to question the legitimacy of their own marriage. Are any sparks of romance still there in their humdrum, routine life?

Phil thinks so and decides to take Claire to a snazzy seafood restaurant on their monthly date night. When they arrive late and cannot get a table, Phil decides to steal a reservation from an absent couple, the Tripplehorns.

Before the Fosters can finish their red wine and risotto, however, they are approached by two armed men (Jimmi Simpson and Common) who believe they are the Tripplehorns. The men accuse the Fosters of stealing a flash drive from their boss, a wise-guy mobster (Ray Liotta).

Cue the mistaken-identity mayhem, screwball-style, featuring appearances from Mark Wahlberg as a security expert that struts around shirtless, Taraji P. Henson as a sassy NYPD detective and William Fichtner as a whiskeyed-up district attorney.

But this is the Carell-Fey show. They successfully shed their small screen alter egos to inhabit regular, grounded characters. You never expect Carell to insert a "That's What She Said" punchline at any point throughout.

The film is best and the laughs come hardest when their dull, ordinary personalities have to interact with the manic situations that they keep getting dragged into.

Still, Carell and Fey try gunning for laughs too much in certain moments, such as in a strip-club debacle. Moreover, their characters act a little beyond what we'd normally expect (for ordinary folk, the Fosters have a knack for breaking and entering).

Regardless, the best and most enduring scene in the movie is when the Fosters discuss the trials of their parenthood. It seems like a real conversation between a husband and wife, far away from the snappy banter you’d likely witness on NBC on Thursday nights.

We grow to love the Fosters more when they behave like real people than as props to move the story forward.

Carell and Fey have the likability to keep us enamored with them for a scant 88 minutes, which is a saving grace given the pathetic material offered.

Klausner and director Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum) set up the jokes and manic situations predictably, and waste our time with running gags that don’t work too well the first time (we know: it's near criminal to take someone else’s reservations).

Thankfully, the talented performers know how to twist a familiar comic set-up into something funny and charming – and more than what it’s worth. One only wonders how the events would’ve turned out if Fey, who led the Saturday Night Live writing team for a short while, had penned the feature.

Date Night will make a great date night once it hits DVD shelves this fall. Then again, isn't the small screen the best place to catch Steve and Tina at their finest?

The Beats That This Movie Skipped

A Prophet

**1/2 out of ****

Directed by: Jacques Audiard

Starring: Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Adel Bencherif and Hichem Yacoubi

Running time: 155 minutes

Many crime sagas end with our criminal being put behind bars, but that’s where the first reel of A Prophet, an Oscar-nominated gangster thriller from France, begins.

Our protagonist's name is Malik El Djebena and he’s portrayed with quiet ferocity by Tahar Rahim.

Malik is in prison for six years. He is illiterate and almost invisible to the tough, meat-headed criminals – a gang of locked up Corsicans led by the frightening, ruthless Cesar Luciani (Niels Arestrup) – who control the joint.

The key word in that last sentence was “almost.” As Malik is in a separate cell block (the one that houses the Arab prisoners), Cesar wants an extension in that wing. He tells Malik to murder an inmate.

And so begins his rise as Cesar’s henchman in a dismal, blood-festering prison.

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, A Prophet takes a stab at offering a contemporary spin on the sprawling crime thrillers popularized by The Godfather and that permeate through much of Scorsese’s filmography.

The performances are powerful and the direction is astute, but A Prophet is never as absorbing as it wants to be. Malik’s rise to prominence as Cesar’s confidante is steady and sustains our attention through a two-and-a-half hour running time, but the character and his descent into a criminal world never get under our skin.

The fault is not of Jacques Audiard, the film’s director. He clips the plot forward without hyper editing and refrains from being over-aggressive with the religious undertones that the title alludes to.

He instills a hushed but gritty atmosphere into the claustrophobic prison settings, and then clears up the image and moves about more freely when the action shifts outside (Malik is arranged throughout the film to go on missions, as Cesar’s representative, beyond the cell walls).

The fault also does not lie within the performances, which are frighteningly good, especially Arestrup’s as the Corsican crime leader. Arestrup has a furious bite and a blistering stare, but he never lets the character descend into an overcooked figurehead cliché.

No, the film’s biggest crime is its lack of character.

Malik is an overly ambiguous case. We follow this character through situations with touch-to-stomach violence and where he must summon intelligent and perceptive decision-making to survive. But we don't learn much about him, only receiving smidgens of his backstory or of his personal motives.

With a figure as morally gray and characteristically ambiguous as Malik, can one expect to be engaged in his journey without any emotional tie to hook onto?

Even with its punchy violence and intricate approach to the crime genre, this is a drab and empty character study. A Prophet may have elements of greatness within it, but it comes up short where it counts: the protagonist. Who could have prophesied that?

Saving The World - One Profanity at a Time

Kick-Ass

*** out of ****

Directed by: Matthew Vaughn

Starring: Aaron Johnson, Chloe Grace Moretz, Nicolas Cage, Mark Strong and Christopher Mintz-Plasse

Running Time: 117 minutes

Kick-Ass, an ultra-violent, relentlessly filthy and downright perverse love-letter to the world of comic book geekdom, is a superhero film without manners. Even the title’s profane.

But while many comic-book flicks are either moody character studies (The Dark Knight, Watchmen, Unbreakable) or breezy crowd-pleasers (The Incredibles, Iron Man), Kick-Ass manages to tackle both aspects and usually succeeds.

The film centers on an awkward, pimply teen named Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), who looks like Harry Potter with a Jew-fro.

While not fantasizing of every girl who walks within reach, Dave is infatuated with comic books. He asks his two buddies (Clark Duke and Evan Peters) why nobody has ever tried being a superhero.

Sure enough, Dave orders a yellow-on-green wetsuit, gives himself the oh-so-unoriginal alias “Kick-Ass,” and starts perfecting his not-so-perfect abilities.

One night, “Kick-Ass” gets involved in a scuffle, defending a battered man from a group of baton-swinging hooligans. The footage is recorded by witnesses, and “Kick-Ass” soon becomes a viral Internet sensation.

This material catches the eye of a local crime lord, Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong), who wants his henchmen to get rid of this lucky punk.

Regardless, “Kick-Ass” also inspires several superhero imitators: some cool (Nicolas Cage’s Big Daddy, who has a score to settle with D’Amico), some not so cool (Red Mist, portrayed by Christopher Mintz-Plasse) and one who will hopefully get a spin-off feature of her own (the pint-sized yet bloodthirsty Hit-Girl, played by (500) Days of Summer’s Chloe Grace Moretz).

Adapted from the comic book by Mark Millar (of Wanted fame) and illustrator John S. Romita Jr., director Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake) brings us both a manic, exhilarating romp and a compelling, dead-serious film with heroes that bleed and bad guys that don’t look too different from those featured in yesterday’s headlines.

But even with savvy pop culture references, zesty dialogue, razor-sharp cynicism and four-letter words flying through the air like bullets, Kick-Ass feels dated. Ordinary people becoming superheroes just isn’t a novel idea anymore.

However, much credit must be given to the cast, who bring a refreshing dose of depth and personality to these familiar superhero archetypes.

Johnson is pitch-perfect as the titular hero, Mintz-Plasse is beginning to shrug off his pathetic McLovin persona as the title character's suave companion, and Nicholas Cage manages to finally get a role with both an edginess and poignancy that suits his dramatic range (and a much-needed haircut).

But to discuss Kick-Ass without mentioning Hit-Girl would be like reviewing The New Testament without referencing Jesus.

She hacks off legs with a single swipe, knows just the right time to ignite a flurry of four-letter bombs, has John Woo’s filmography memorized to a tee, and can shoot down a room of henchmen faster than the most experienced video gamer. Oh, and she’s also an 11-year-old girl.

Some will look at Hit-Girl and say she's downright awesome. Others will believe she’s morally repugnant and will scorn the film as a result (many critics and parent groups already have). But nobody can deny that she’s an absolute original: a sweetheart who’s loyal to her father, has a wicked sense of humour, and who butchers every bad guy in sight.

But while Vaughn manages to juggle both jest and realism throughout, there are a few jarring shifts in tone.

In one climactic scene where two of the main characters are held hostage in a warehouse, the mood goes from dreadfully dark to cartoonishly violent to remarkably poignant in just a few minutes.

This shaky balancing in tone is all that I can fault the director with. Vaughn simply embraces the comic-book universe.

His scenes feature monochromatic backgrounds, as well as distinct planes of action that consist of different colours, intricately homaging the design of the art form. Vaughn also introduces the scenes with the same rhythm and stages the characters with the precise positioning that comic-book and graphic novel creators use in their works.

An imperfect but consistently entertaining hybrid of outrageous fun and effective character study, Kick-Ass ensures that the superhero genre is alive with strong performances and kicking with an R-rated blast of what some may call violent pornography.

The film is irreverent and gleefully uncensored, but also a lot of fun. I’d buy a ticket anyway: you never know when Hit-Girl and her bench-made model 42 butterfly knife may turn up.

A Boy and His Dragon

How To Train Your Dragon

*** out of ****

Directed by: Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders

Featuring the Voice Talents of: Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, America Ferrera, Craig Ferguson and Jonah Hill

Running time: 98 minutes

If Pixar is the valedictorian of animated film studios, then Dreamworks Animation would be the class clown, with their lighter, cheekier, and more colourful kids fare. But the latter company is moving closer to adopting that former studio’s genius, and these attempts are on full display in How To Train Your Dragon.

Based on the first installment of Cressida Cowell’s children’s books, Dragon is a charming tale of Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), a young Viking living on an island routinely plagued by dragon attacks. The village's inhabitants are dead-set on annihilating the creatures.

Hiccup’s beefy father, Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler provides the voice), even wants his wimpy son to toughen up and learn how to slay the ferocious beasts. But, when Hiccup finds a wounded black beast (who he names Toothless) and helps to mend its wounds, an unlikely friendship is formed.

Dragon shares a suspicious number of similarities with the blockbuster Avatar. Its flying sequences have an exhilarating swoop and the animation bursts with a bold visual palette, much like Cameron’s billion-dollar grosser. The animation is DreamWorks’ most stunning yet.

The dragons are fascinating and vividly designed. The Vikings... not so much.

Those bothered by bland characters, a familiar story structure, and bombastic war-and-peace overtones may be wishing that the screenwriters (the co-directors, DeBlois and Sanders, who also penned Mulan and Lilo and Stitch) had received as much training as Toothless.

But, DreamWorks Animation has learned a valuable lesson from Pixar storytellers: subtle, poignant, dialogue-free scenes – like the ones that populated Up and Wall-E to great effect – are key in captivating an audience. The quieter moments, when Hiccup ushers a peace with his scaly companion, ensure that Dragon finally gets off the ground.

With these lovely bonding moments, this world of warfare and wonder becomes something that’s tangible, humane and inviting. After many scenes of hyperactive action, the film can finally breathe - and it doesn't need fire to do so.

With its heart intact, Dragon is not only a soaring spectacle but a rousing love story – one between a boy and his dragon.