Date Night: Extended Edition (2010)

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General		Extras
Category	Romantic Comedy	Main Menu Audio & Animation Outtakes-2 sets Featurette-Making Of Featurette-Behind The Scenes Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	2010
Running Time	97:28
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (61:00)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Shawn Levy
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Steve Carell Tina Fey Mark Wahlberg Taraji P. Henson Jimmi Simpson Common
Case	?
RPI	$35.95	Music	Christophe Beck

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Descriptive Audio Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English Danish Finnish German Norwegian Swedish Turkish English Titling German	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

     One of the most successful comedies this year was this film, Date Night, starring two of the biggest stars of comedy at the moment, Steve Carell and Tina Fey. It took about $150 million at the global box office which is a pretty good result for a comedy. I saw it at the cinema and was surprised to see how many teenagers were in attendance considering it is a comedy about married life with kids. The older couples in the audience laughed quite a lot more than the teenagers did. This is quite a funny movie and is certainly amusing for its core audience, married couples with young kids.

     The story follows married couple Phil (Carell) and Claire Foster (Fey). They live a pretty mundane life dealing with the day to day responsibilities of demanding jobs and children, whilst also trying to maintain their own relationship. Phil is a tax consultant and Claire is a real estate agent, neither are incredibly successful. They live in the suburbs near New York. Each week they try to get away from the kids and have dinner together on 'Date Night'. One night, Phil gets sick of them doing the same thing and based on a spur of the moment decision they decide to head into the city to go to dinner at the latest most fashionable restaurant. Of course, Phil does not have a reservation and tries to talk his way into a table. This is unsuccessful, however while they wait at the bar he decides to do something rash. When a waitress comes through the bar calling for "The Tripplehorns" to come to their table, Phil tells her that they are the couple in question. This leads to a night of thrills, excitement and danger they did not expect. There are also cameos by Mark Ruffalo, Mark Wahlberg, James Franco and Will.I.Am.

     This is a fun and very relevant comedy for married couples who will enjoy the jokes about dealing with kids, being tired all the time, having difficulty finding time for intimacy as a couple and more. There is also lots of 'fish out of water' style comedy as the couple get deeper and deeper into trouble as the evening progresses. This is a well written movie that manages to avoid too many clichés. It is an enjoyable hour and a half, without probably hitting the heights of the best comedies ever. There is a great car chase scene but some other sequences drag a little. It was shot by Dean Semler, Academy Award winning Australian cinematographer and directed by Shawn Levy, now making a name for himself in family comedies.

     The cut included on this DVD is known as the extended cut, running over 97 minutes in PAL. The original theatrical cut is 88 minutes.

     Recommended for a fun evening for married couples who can't go out because of the kids asleep in the other room.

Video

     The video quality is excellent for SD. The feature is presented in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio which is the original aspect ratio. It is 16x9 enhanced widescreen.

     The picture was clear and sharp throughout. The colour was excellent with no colour artefacts. There were no noticeable artefacts.

     There are subtitles in English for the Hearing Impaired and a number of other languages. There is also a default English track for foreign languages only. They were clear and easy to read.

     There is a layer change during the main program at 61:00 which is not noticeable during playback.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

     The audio quality is very good but will not test your home theatre. This DVD contains an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack encoded at 448 Kb/s, an English Dolby Digital Audio Descriptive 5.1 soundtrack encoded at 384 Kb/s and a German Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack encoded at 384 Kb/s.

     Dialogue was clear and easy to understand throughout.

     The score by Christophe Beck is very suitable to the material adding to the atmosphere.

     The surround speakers were used mostly for atmosphere and music. There were some directional effects during the car chase. The subwoofer was used for music support and adding some bass to action scenes like the car chase.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

     Extras have subtitles available.

Menu

The menu was fun including an intro, music and motion.

Alt City (1:50)

     Some funny alternate lines and version of scenes.

Directing 301 (20:56)

     One of the most interesting extras I have seen for a while. This is hosted by the director and runs through in some detail a day on the set covering all the different things a director needs to deal with. Covers the digital shooting approach, setting up shots, shooting issues, night time work and other things. Very interesting.

Directing off Camera (3:48)

     Short featurette about Levy interacting with the actors and child actors with the camera rolling. Nothing special

Gag Reel (5:50)

     A quite funny set of onset stuff-ups and alternate lines.

Theatrical Trailer (2:27)

     Pretty standard trailer.

    There are two editions available in Region 1, one is exactly the same as our local version, the other includes both cuts of the film and a commentary. Also available on Blu-ray in Region A and Region B.

    The video quality is excellent. The audio quality is very good. The extras are decent.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall