Saturday, March 31, 2018

Game Night is the greatest movie of all time



This was super fun. Like that Michael Douglas movie The Game where bored rich people pay a company to ruin their lives all in good fun. When I become a one percenter I am totally going to pay to have someone simulate kidnapping and murdering people on my trivia team. I'm only like half kidding about that as I do occasionally host game nights, do trivia multiple times a week, and do shit like escape rooms when I'm on vacation. Totally relate to that shit. Gotta love a movie like that. Greatest movie of all time, in fact.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: With a talented cast turned loose on a loaded premise -- and a sharp script loaded with dark comedy and unexpected twists -- Game Night might be more fun than the real thing.

Pros: Fun and funny. Light for movie featuring torture and murder. Basically everything Jason Bateman is in is going to be solid. Lots of surprise cameos.

Cons: Too many twists. It got a little irritating how many times shit would go insane and someone would jump out and say "it's all part of the game."

Staring Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams, Game Night features a gang of buds who meet with a pair of couples for a weekly game night. When Bateman's character's brother, played by Kyle Chandler of Friday Night Lights (the series) fame, who makes a living selling dubious shit on the black market, shows up and ups the unpredictability by signing them up for a kidnap mystery party which leads to some of the old ultraviolence when real kidnappers show up to the crib. As time goes by and people get  the group starts to realize that it is not all part of game.

The couples are made up of Kylie Bunbury (who was the lead in that garbage show Pitch), Sharon Horgan, Billy Magnussen (who looks like that Matt Bomer guy from American Horror Story but is not that guy), and Lamorne Morris (the black guy in New Girl). Some of the cameos include Jesse Plemons who was Landry in Friday Night Lights and a psychopath in Breaking Bad, Dexter (Michael C. Hall), Danny Huston (brother of Angelica who actually was in AHS), Chelsea Peretti from Brooklyn 99, and Jeffrey Wright.

Much of the humor comes as the group gets increasingly deeper in a violent, chaotic world they are ill equipped. But their competitive natures help them get through it. Favorite scene was the one featuring the game of Faberge egg football. They go to a rich people fight club where these one percenters engage in human cockfighting. There one of them steals the egg, they have to get it to save Bateman's brother who back stabbed Dexter's character and is being held hostage. It doesn't get more slapsticky than this but was still pretty funny. Also coming on strong was Plemons's character who is a cop that lives next door to Bateman and McAdams. The group basically dropped Plemons, who is a cop, after him and his old lady split. They think he sucks (he does) and go to great lengths to avoid him around game night. That dude is too weird and deadpan to live. Another great scene from the movie is when they have to go to his house to use his police computer and Bateman, who was shot earlier in the film, bleeds all over the shrine he has built for his ex and the guy's white dog. Good stuff.

The whole vibe of the flick reminded me of this dope Bill Murray movie from the 1990s called The Man Who Knew Too Little. Similarly, that film feature a clueless guy that unknowingly gets in over his head. If you like this flick you should definitely check that shit out. It's also chaos like another enjoyable flick from back when called Rat Race which featured a bunch clueless idiots trying to get to some location before everyone else to score some big payout. Both are zany and physical and also fun and uptempo.

The twists kind of get old. We keep getting people popping out of woodwork being like "that was all part of the game!" These keep getting more elaborate and ridiculous. After the third time this happened I was sort of over it and irritated. But it comes back around again, kind of, at the end when people have fucking died and such and characters were like, "oh, that was Kevin, he is an actor, he's fine," when he was obviously completely dead and such. Overall the flick is pretty fun. While I won't buy it on Blu-ray or digital, I'll probably rewatch it (or pirate that shit) when it comes to Netflix or HBO or whatevs.

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