Date Night

Directed by Shawn Levy. Starring Steve Carell, Tina Fey, Mark Wahlberg, James Franco, Leighton Meester, Common 15A cert, gen release, 88 min

STOP ME if you’ve read this here before (and you have), but the current status of the romantic comedy is so dire – a steady tone emerges from a heart monitor showing a dead straight line – that you feel like cheering when such an entity manages to be, well, not good exactly, but not actually aggressively terrible.

Date Nightis often lame and never very funny. But the fact that it doesn't make you want to poke your eyes out with filthy sticks is cause for minor celebration.

The plot is, basically, a variation on that of Neil Simon's The Out of Towners. Tina Fey and Steve Carell play a suburban couple who, whacked-out by over-familiarity, take one night a week to have dinner in a dull local restaurant.

The film begins with them rashly deciding to break with protocol and venture into a flashy new eatery in Manhattan. Inevitably the swish establishment is booked out. Noticing that a particular reservation has not been taken up, they pretend to be the missing couple. Unfortunately these Tripplehorns have enraged a local hoodlum and, mistaken for the non-diners, Steve and Tina find themselves fleeing bullets and negotiating with homicidal maniacs.

It is good to see a comedy concerning itself with the affairs of adults. There's nothing wrong with poo jokes, but the class of fall-down farce essayed here has been too long absent for our cinemas. Sadly, there is just something wrong with Date Night.

The direction by Shawn Levy, master of the Nights at the Museumfilms, is pedestrian in the extreme. But the major difficulty is, surprisingly, the partnership between the undeniably talented leads. They are just too similar – buttoned-up, squeaky – to form an effective double act. Heck, they even look like one another. It would be more acceptable if they had noisier personae, but, as things stand, it's not even like watching Morecambe and Morecambe. It's like watching Wise and Wise. A gruesome prospect, you'll agree.