"These are the Fosters."
The Fosters, you see, are two of primetime situation comedy's most beloved personalities, NBC's critically adored Thursday night schedule anchors, Steve Carrell and Tina Fey, entertainment forces so potent that not even Jay Leno's black hole of desperate joylessness has yet sucked them, kicking and screaming, into his modestly budgeted 10 p.m. abyss.
And while it's probably unfair to think of this as a vehicle whereby Michael Scott and Liz Lemon finally fulfill the slash-fic potential we've never even dared dream about, even in the naughtiest, most shameful fantasies we succumb to to combat the creeping despair brought on by the thought of Carell zooming through a hail of ping-pong balls in a Green Car Challenge that one time, well, we can't help it, our mind wants to go to there. And this slash-fic begins exactly as it must: with Fey, wearing a ratty t-shirt and her signature glasses to bed, slurping on a retainer, offering to get herself into the fooling-around headspace necessary to fulfill what we assume is some pre-scheduled marital nookie.
"This is their life."
Yeah, there's a cute kid jumping on the bed. The set-up of the set-up is complete: We're fully in their world, where they forget it's Sex Night because their hyper, but adorable, son saps their energy with pile-drivers and ripped-off Breathe-Right strips and all sorts of typical, this-if-our-life-now shenanigans.
"This is the night." "They'll never forget."
The Date Night! The appearance of a rude maitre'd hints at what's to come mere seconds later: Wackiness, as it must, as we demand, is about to ensue.
A mistaken identity! It's already been established they're the Fosters, and now Common and one of the McPoyles from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia are insisting with no small amount of menace that they are the Tripplehorns, whose reservation they've just stolen, and who seem to be mixed up in the dark business of some ostensibly shady, Italian-surnamed character. A gun is pulled, a shovel swung, a small motorboat used as a shield.
Our Date Night is well under way.
The first stop -- surprisingly, thrillingly -- is the apartment of one Marky Mark, whom we presume is not wearing a shirt because it would constrict the Minority Report-style sh*t he conducts on his futuristic home computer. This is a savvy move on the part of the studio, because if you're going to have a bare-chested Marky Mark shirt in your movie, you had better try to sell a few tickets by publicizing that stunt-shirtlessness. (Indeed, clicking on any of the segments in Mr. Mark's six-pack immediately redirects you to a Fandango pre-sale page.) And once Marky Mark shares, after consulting the machine furnished to him by the Pre-Complication Division, that the Fosters are now tangled up in something far more dangerous than they'd dreamed, it's time for a car chase that lets us now we're safely ensnared in an action-comedy.
Then we get to meet The Tripplehorns! James Franco, playing himself, and Mila Kunis, playing the kind of lady who'd be romantically associated with a short-sleeved, tattooed, probably permabaked James Franco type, take their places.
Finally, the sound of their giant names flying onto the screen distracts Carell and Fey so badly that they walk straight into some glass doors. A little physical comedy never killed anybody. Nor has a well-intentioned "whacked off" joke, for that matter. And we are satisfied.
Scott/Carell and Lemon/Fey, see you in April. Until then, may you couple in our heads each time we're subjected to an ad for Jay Leno.
Verdict: We bought four tickets within the first ten seconds of the trailer. Four single tickets for four separate showings. We're so easy sometimes, it disgusts us, quite frankly.
Bonus item for people who care about such things, and you know who you are: Hey, Olivia Munn!
Date Night Trailer [YouTube]