Games Night Gone Wrong is not a new movie conceit. From Michael Douglas’s The Game to Cheap Thrills to newcomers like Nerve, gaming enthusiasts in TV and movies rarely have an easy time of it. Just ask anyone who ever used a Holodeck in Star Trek. At the same time, since The Hangover, R-rated comedies have been steadily raising the stakes, substituting harmless slapstick for bodily dismemberment and the frequent abuse of poor Ed Helms. It was only a matter of time before the two cinematic institutions collided, applying the shocks and violence of a Hangover sequel to the story of an adults’ games night gone wrong. Game on.
Three zany but boring couples meet at Jason Bateman’s house on a regular basis to play a series of games; charades, Scrabble, The Game of Life and pretty much anything else with a Hasbro label on it. The couples’ vanilla bliss is thrown into disarray when smarmy brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) joins in the party, bringing a game of his own to the table: gangster kidnap mystery. But, in news that will surprise nobody, the gangsters are real and so is the kidnapping… or is it? The race is on for the gamers to rescue Brooks and survive the night themselves.
Vacation directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein have assembled a fine cast here, with Bateman and Rachel McAdams tying the whole thing together perfectly as the competitive husband and wife leading the gang. While the rest of the main cast aren’t as all-star as you might expect from a film of this calibre and budget, Sharon Horgan and Jesse Plemons hoard the monopoly of the laughs – the rest of which go to McAdams, who gets to have fun in a way most on-screen wives tend not to in this sort of thing. It’s Plemons who steals the show though, as the creepy, intense police neighbour Gary.
Largely, however, there aren’t that many laughs for anyone to steal or be stolen from. The comedy assumes that shocking violence and celebrity cameos are inherently funny, and the ‘laughs’ largely revolve around people being shot, punched or killed, either accidentally or on purpose. Thankfully, the action beats are to a higher standard than the writing, meaning that the film moves along at a healthy pace, even if it’s not being all that funny – or even as shocking as it thinks it is. It’s like a game of Cards Against Humanity in which everyone is playing with a far too sensible deck.
For all its bluster, Game Night isn’t really much of anything. It’s not particularly funny, not mean enough to work as a black comedy and not clever enough to be thrilling. Aside from McAdams, Plemons, and Horgan, the characters are as dull as the games they play (as though any self-respecting gang of board game enthusiasts would be playing Scrabble week in, week out) and the story barely makes sense, relying far too much on the old ‘it was all part of the game… or was it?!’ switcheroo that audiences will see coming from miles off. While it’s hard to begrudge Bateman and McAdams a vehicle for their charm, chemistry and charisma, this Game Night is a bit of a flop.
GAME NIGHT / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: JOHN FRANCIS DALEY, JONATHAN GOLDSTEIN / SCREENPLAY: MARK PEREZ / STARRING: JASON BATEMAN, RACHEL MCADAMS, KYLE CHANDLER / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
Expected Rating: 7 out of 10
