Review: Game Night

Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams are a husband-and-wife team of super-competitive board game players who host a ‘game night’ at their house regularly with friends. The usual players are husband-and-wife Lamorne Morris and Kylie Bunbury, as well as single Billy Magnussen who brings a different hot-but-dumb date with him (not that Magnussen is Einstein himself). On this particular occasion he has brought someone a bit smarter in Irish-born Sharon Horgan, who spends much of the film entirely unimpressed with the himbo. A surprise turn-up comes in the form of Bateman’s more financially successful but jerk-y brother Kyle Chandler, who quickly proceeds to usurp the evening by organising a different kind of ‘game night’. It’s basically a form of ‘murder-mystery’ party game, involving someone getting kidnapped and the teams having to follow the clues to rescue them. On cue, some goons come along to whisk Chandler away, and the game is on. Only, when Bateman gets shot in the foot, he and McAdams start to realise that this isn’t a game, and Chandler really was kidnapped. Jeffrey Wright plays a phony goon, Michael C. Hall turns up as a real criminal, and Jesse Plemons plays the intensely creepy cop next door who is jealous of having not been invited to the party.

 

I should’ve looked closer at the title. Instead of something like the silly but funny “Tag”, this 2018 film from directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (who directed the not-bad “Vacation” remake together and wrote the solid “Horrible Bosses”) is a lot more like the limp “Date Night”. In addition to having similar plot developments, it’s yet another supposed comedy that seems to want to be a big, loud, and dumb action-thriller instead (right down to a late-arriving, seriously intense Michael C. Hall). The result isn’t especially funny or thrilling, though there are a few moments like a bullet-removal scene. Jesse Plemons scores points as the weirdly intense cop neighbour, Jeffrey Wright’s cameo is amusing too, and the Denzel Washington bits are funny. Scripted by Mark Perez (“The Country Bears”), the rest is a pretty big miss however. Aside from a rather unpleasant Sharon Horgan (who also speaks too softly and quickly), the performances are all good, but the film is loud and dull. Why all the ‘jump’ scares in a comedy? That’s just annoying. Why are we still doing the “Shaun of the Dead” crash-zoom montage thing? It wasn’t funny or clever the first time.

 

Mostly well-acted, but overly loud comedy that drags on and only contains intermittent laughs. On the plus side, Chad Lail (Former WWE Superstar Jaxson Ryker) isn’t the worst wrestler-turned actor, in a cameo as a goon. In fact, it’s probably a vocation he should be switching to.

 

Rating: C