Went to see the comedy Game Night. This is a very funny, laugh-out-loud comedy. I recommend it quite a lot.
The film is about a group of married and dating friends who meet up for game nights. On one such meet-up, one of them suggests a murder-mystery experience and soon thugs break into the house and kidnap him. Little do the other players know, but this wasn’t part of the game so they set off to solve the kidnapping without realizing the stakes are real.
I laughed often and a lot at this movie. It’s really well-written and thought-out. It earns most of its jokes through the tight script and the line readings from the actors who are all-in on the fun. Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams star but they aren’t the only ones with the great on-screen moments. It’s a really good cast of character actors playing weird, confused, exasperated, and Denzel Washington as best they can (to be clear: Denzel’s not in the movie).
Jason Bateman does kind of play the usual Jason Bateman roll, though his sarcasm is given a legit character reason so he comes off more three dimensional than usual. Don’t get me wrong, I also like the guy’s niche but he did more with it this time around. Rachael McAdams should do comedy more and its nice to see her back being funny. She plays equal to Bateman and they didn’t short-shrift her part as the girlfriend/wife. She’s got a real character, a real edge, and real motivations.
It’s almost weird to point out the technical film-making achievements in a broad, goofy comedy but I gotta. The film has a great one-shot action set piece involving an egg… I’m sure it’s multiple shots but it plays like one continuous camera movement. Very well done. There are car chases with some really neat camera work. And many establishing shots use that camera trick that makes distant shots look like miniatures or toys (or, you know, like a board game). The musical score was also a very cool techno beat that gave the film a slick, smart, fast-paced edge. Again, it’s odd to praise the technical merits of a comedy but the film did a noticeably good job.
One complaint though: the friends mostly play part games like Charades… which is fine. But there’s one scene where they bring a stack of board games in case the person hosting didn’t have any. And they brought Scrabble, Life, and Monopoly, as I recall. Board game friends will know the problem… everyone else ignore this paragraph.
So yeah, this is a really enjoyable, solid comedy. One of the best I’ve seen in years, in fact. Don’t want to oversell it but I laughed often and out-loud often enough. The actors were all having fun and giving it their all, the script was solid and smart, and the direction and music were really cool. I say check it out.
Score: 86