Game Night - Review

Game Night

Kyle Chandler, Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams star in the adult comedy “Game Night”. A story about 3 couples of very close friends who ritually get together each Friday night to play games which are highly competitive especially for husband and wife Max (Bateman) and Annie (McAdams).

At the start of the film we see Max and Annie getting ready midweek to have the food and beverages for the coming “Game night” which it typically held at their home. Only on this occasion it’s a more unique gathering in that Max has asked everyone to park down the street and come as quietly as possible to their house so as not to alert their neighbor they haven’t invited him. They don’t particularly care for his company socially largely because he is a poor game player, he is recently divorced and he is a cop who oddly never wants to take off his uniform. Also, Max super internationally successful wealthy brother is back in the country and is coming over for a visit.  While they both love each other, his older brother Brooks (Chandler) always reminds Max how more successful and wealthy he is to no annoying end.

When it’s time to go home Brooks insists that the next “game night” be at his lavish new home he bought nearby. Only this time his game night rules will be predicated on staging a fake home invasion of masked men who will kidnap Brooke while leaving some clues as to where he might be hidden in the city. The winner gets a priceless new car that everyone wants.

But when game night comes at Brooks home there is one major problem. Instead of the fake kidnappers arriving first some real international mercenary types take Brooks away leaving the 3 couples naively in the dark that it’s all part of the game night prank. Little do they know that Brooks and their own lives are in real danger and can only be spared if they comply when someone calls with a mysterious augmented voice who insists that if they all want to live they have to break into another man’s wealthy home to retrieve a priceless Faberge Egg. Let the game night adventure begin.

REVIEW: Running 1:33 minutes "Game Night" overall is both fun to watch with some decent hilariously funny moments inside it's viewing as well. It also has some dimwitted and loopy moments as well. But the real strength of this film is the steady pacing of the plot with some good twist and turns along the way, largely led by the natural chemistry and interplay between Bateman and McAdams as husband and wife Max and Annie. It’s their loving relationship as well as their somewhat neurotic exchanges that keep the film fast action and dialogue from ever getting boring.

There was also very imaginative moments that made me laugh out loud including a scene of a bullet being removed from an arm, an ongoing dispute between one of the couples who while they were dating had affairs before they got married, a dimwitted male actor gets by on his charm, the creepy police officer neighbor frustration in not being invited to game night anymore and a funny twist at the film’s end with actor Michael C. Hall formerly of Showtime’s “Dexter”.

The less I say the better as overall “Game Night” is funny, stylish, at times sexy, and at times a smart and very good looking film as well. In the end both the movie and its “Game Night” players were very good company to keep for me whether it was a game they were playing or not. I had fun watching them have fun.

3.25 Stars