Review: Game Night

I saw Game Night earlier in the year but never got the chance to review it and I wanted to because along with Blockers 2018 was a great year for R-Rated comedies and I wanted to give both of them their due. It’s quite a bit darker than I was expecting but it all works to play into its strengths and makes it funnier as a result.

The film opens with two board game lovers, Max and Annie, meeting, falling in love and getting married, the two of them have a strong relationship based on mutual respect and a ton of fun which is amplified by their weekly Game Night, where once a week with their friends - high-school sweethearts Kevin and Michelle and dim-witted Ryan and whatever dumb blonde he convinces to join him - that week they go to each other’s houses and play games for bragging rights. Although since their weird cop neighbour Gary got divorced from their friend Debbie they’ve been trying to be a little more low-key to avoid including him.

When Max’s richer, more successful and better looking brother Brooke returns to town he involves himself in the Game Night, hosting a murder-mystery tour where one of the group is to be kidnapped and the others have to solve riddles to find them. Brooke is the one kidnapped but unbeknownst to the others, Brooke’s kidnapping is not part of the game, rather his own shady dealings have gotten him actually kidnapped leaving the others to solve a very real and very dangerous game.

The initial set-up is a fun premise, watching everyone be oblivious is a lot of fun and leads to some great moments but what’s better is that the film knows that premise isn’t enough to carry the whole film so the switch-up to an actual investigation allows them to do more but still keeping the general feeling of everyone still trying to one-up each other. I’m not 100% on the last 15 minutes only because the twist reveal feels like it was included to give the film something resembling an action scene but it’s still a good scene and doesn’t ruin the film in any way.

Characters were enjoyable, there’s a few fun cameo’s spotted throughout with main villain The Bulgarian having a nice surprise reveal. The only people I wasn’t too hot on was Kevin and Michelle, both were fine and they had plenty of funny moments with Michelle playing the straight guy of the two and Kevin’s utter bewilderment often contrasting nicely. But the crux of their comedy was rested on the reveal that Michelle slept with a celebrity during a break they had years ago and Kevin wanting to find out who it was. As a recurring joke I can see the appeal and the reveal is pretty funny but personally I thought it went on a little longer than it needed to.

I did prefer Ryan and his date Sarah who was actually a lot smarter than everyone expected, like Kevin and Michelle it was Sarah playing the straight guy while Ryan played the buffoon but it worked, Ryan was an idiot without becoming annoying and Sarah’s constant exasperation with him kept both of them from getting too stale. Ryan especially had some great non-thinking moments where he acted or spoke and didn’t realise it was wrong till afterwards and even then some of his nonsense turns out to be true with a nice pay-off for one of his lines about half-way through.

Main couple Max and Annie (played by Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams) were definitely some of the highlights, for one thing the chemistry between Bateman and McAdams was surprisingly strong, neither Max or Annie were perfect, far from it in fact with both of them having a strong, competitive spirit but that’s what made them such a great couple, they knew the value of working together to spite the competition and were an excellent double-act as a result. Bateman plays a great straight man and that’s still true here with his reaction to the utter madness around him – including bullet-holes, bloody dogs and embarrassing blowjob stories – being pitch-perfect while McAdams is allowed to cut a little looser, she’s not crazy but this is not a Rachel McAdams we’re use to seeing, she’s waving a gun around, talking about semen, doing surgery with phone instructions, it’s a great role and McAdams just dives into it headfirst to have a ton of fun and stretch some comedy muscles she hasn’t used this well since Mean Girls.

Rounding out the cast was Max’s brother Brooke played by Kyle Chandler and neighbour Gary played by Meth Damon, Jesse Plemons. In a twist from his usually lawful good characters, Chandler plays Brooke as an absolute dickhead, he demeans Max at every turn, acts cruel and passive aggressive and most of his wealth is from illegal activities. Watching just how selfish Brooke gets at every turn to save his own ass provided some of the film’s funnier moments. By contrast Plemons played Gary completely straight-laced and was one of the film’s funniest characters as a result, having been divorced from his wife Debbie and clearly not taken it very well, Gary is a weird, creepy, overly friendly guy, a little too intense for his own good but his heart’s in the right place which makes his reveal at the end all the better because you can see where his mind is at but it’s still a very strange thing to do.

Directing pair John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein have a varied history from the bad (their first directing job was the Vacation remake) the good (writers for Horrible Bosses) and the surprising (worked on the Spider-Man: Homecoming script), but with this film they capture a very dark, very funny style of humour that delivers a lot of fun with just a tinge of death and violence. The first part of the film with everyone oblivious to what’s going on allowed them to play dumb for a good while, all of them trying (and mostly resorting to cheating) to solve Brooke’s riddles with Max and Annie making the best headway and finding ways to explain everything away with the bar scene allowing Annie to play out her best Pulp Fiction impression.

But from the first bullet fired to the end the film brings in a new level of humour that turns it into something much better, for starters the bullet surgery scene is perhaps the best scene in the film with Bateman and McAdams both struggling to get through it. From there once everyone is onboard the film takes them through some very odd situations that they wouldn’t have found had they stayed ignorant, from fight clubs to midnight Jenga, I don’t want to spoil anything that happens but it’s a lot of fun to watch, and the ongoing race away from the Bulgarian kept the pace strong, slowing down only occasionally for a few characters bit but never losing the kidnapping plot nor watering it down, people do die and in quite funny ways.

Game Night was a nice surprise for me, it can be difficult for an R-Rated comedy to not dive into toilet humour but this captured the best black humour I’ve seen in a while. The story has a great set-up and an even better pay-off, the characters are all fun with Bateman, McAdams and Plemons delivering the best of the film and everything is quick, dark and funny as hell. Definitely worth watching if you’re into a little more adult comedy.

8/10