Starring Steve Carell and Tina Fey. Rated PG. Opens Friday, April 9, at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas

Date Night’s strongest suit is the easygoing chemistry between its TV–bred leads, and the movie doesn’t just coast on that. Steve Carell tones down his antics and, conversely, Tina Fey gets to whoop it up as harried New Jerseyites Phil and Claire Foster, whose evening on the town tests their marriage in unexpected, mostly funny, new ways.

Montreal-born director Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum) and screenwriter Josh Klausner (Shrek the Third) efficiently sketch our suburbanites’s generic rut before yanking them roughly out of it. In this After Hours Lite, the couple’s attempt at a romantic rendezvous goes wrong when they snag someone else’s reservation at a trendy Manhattan eatery. Mistaken for the no-shows by nogoodniks dressed in black (Jimmi Simpson and rapper Common), they’re chased by cops and crooks for the MacGuffin—a computer flashdrive they neither possess nor comprehend—sought by a gangster played, in a nothing part, by Ray Liotta.

His is one of many cameos here of varying sizes and effectiveness. Blink and you’ll miss Mark Ruffalo as the pal who gives the Fosters food for marital thought. Mark Wahlberg, however, seems to enjoy his occasional appearances as a shirtless security expert.

The wit is never as dry as the vermouth-tinged barbs thrown between William Powell and Myrna Loy in the Thin Man movies, and Nick and Nora Charles never attempted pole dancing to get out of a tough spot. A lot of the action is silly, and a long car-chase sequence, while well executed, could have been lifted from a dozen other movies. What is original is the way the Fosters comport themselves like actual married people; while bullets fly, they’re still negotiating with the babysitter for reasonable overtime.