Not your average game of charades
Game Night 15 cert, 100 min
Dirs John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein
Starring Rachel Mcadams, Jason Bateman, Jesse Plemons, Billy Magnussen, Kyle Chandler, Sharon Horgan
It feels like a long time since we saw a mainstream Hollywood comedy that actually worked – a glossy production with a consistently funny story that builds from a relatable beginning to a pleasantly absurd conclusion. But this silly effort, like a comic spin on David Fincher’s The Game, delivers all the undemanding laughs you could wish for, and has a plot of such baroque intricacy that it even manages a few genuine shocks.
Max (Jason Bateman) and Annie (Rachel Mcadams) are a wildly competitive couple who hold a regular game night with the blissfully wed Kevin (Lamorne Morris) and Michelle (Kylie Bunbury), and the nice-but-dim Ryan (Billy Magnussen).
But the gang get more than they bargained for when they allow Max’s more successful brother Brook (Kyle Chandler) to host one week’s gettogether. Brook announces that, instead of the usual board games and trivia quizzes, the gang will be taking part in a live-action role-play. Someone will be kidnapped and the rest will have to decipher clues to rescue their friend and win the game. Just one problem: things get real awfully fast.
It would do you a disservice to say much about the plot beyond that point, but suffice to say that the fake kidnapping turns out to be real, and that things snowball from there. Bateman and Mcadams manage to be dead-set on winning but not entirely unsympathetic thanks to their peppy enthusiasm and mutual devotion; their ruthless streak is largely confined to the opening montage.
What Game Night lacks in (any) plausibility or coherence it makes up for in Friday night, pleasingly brainless entertainment.