Game Night **** / *****
Directed by: John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein.
Written by: Mark Perez.
Starring: Jason Bateman (Max), Rachel McAdams (Annie), Kyle Chandler (Brooks), Sharon Horgan (Sarah), Billy Magnussen (Ryan), Lamorne Morris (Kevin), Kylie Bunbury (Michelle), Jesse Plemons (Gary), Michael C. Hall (The Bulgarian), Danny Huston (Donald Anderton), Chelsea Peretti (Glenda), Camille Chen (Dr. Chin).
I’m not quite sure when major studios forgot how to make great, smart, mainstream comedies aimed at adults but they basically have. Most mainstream comedies have a few laughs, but not much else, as they rely on big personalities and juvenile jokes about bodily fluids and sex to be funny, and they hardly ever are. I assumed from the previews that Game Night would be another of those movies – another film like Fist Fight or Central Intelligence or any number of other comedies that had enough jokes to fill a trailer, but not enough to sustain a movie. Boy, was I wrong. This is the best mainstream, goofy studio comedy I have seen in a long, long time.
The basic premise is simple – ultra-competitive married couple Max and Annie (Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams) host a weekly game night for their friends – married couple Kevin and Michelle (Lamorne Morris and Kylie Bunbury) and charming womanizer Ryan (Billy Magnussen), who brings whatever clerk from La Senza or Forever 21 he’s currently dating. They used to invite the couple next door, but they got divorced, and the woman moved out – leaving just her creepy cop husband Gary (Jesse Plemons) behind – who longs to be re-invited back, but isn’t. Things get stranger with the return of Max’s brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) – who is more successful in almost every way than Max, the golden child, who says they should have game night at the mansion he’s renting. This will not be a regular game night though – he’s kicked it up a notch, by staging a would be kidnapping game – where he will get kidnapped, and the others have to find him. So when armed men break in, and kidnap him, the rest of them are not fazed – although, of course, it turns out to be a real kidnaping, and the three couples (this time Ryan with Sharon Horgan’s Sarah – much smarter than most of the girls he has dated) head out to try and find him, only gradually realizing what is really happening.
I will fully admit that the setup sounds like it would make for a silly, not all that good comedy – but the film is all about the execution here. For one thing, the film is perfectly cast – particularly Bateman and McAdams who have real chemistry together, and make an unexpectedly great comic team. For another, the screenplay by Mark Perez is actually quite smart, in pushing things past the point of ridiculousness, but still maintaining some semblance of a real world. Oddly, the film takes as its inspiration David Fincher’s underseen, under rated 1997 film The Game, including the sibling rivalry aspect between Michael Douglas and Sean Penn, and takes that aspect seriously enough that you feel it, but not so seriously that it derails the film. Credit also has to be given to director John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, who do a lot more than most comedy directors – who seem happy enough to point their cameras at moving stars being goofy and leave it at that. There is a dynamic sequence as a house party that crosses Fight Club with Eyes Wide Shut, and an egg being thrown around that is hilarious, and shot in a way to give it maximum energy.
The film never really steps wrong – every time you think it’s going to, it comes up with a new strange way to go, a new twist that sends it off in another direction, while never losing comic momentum. The whole cast is great – each of the couples have their own comic energy that works. Special mention should be given to Rachel McAdams though, who shows once again that in another time and place (say, the 1990s) she would have become the biggest female star in the world, with her excellent comic timing and delivery, she is just endlessly great here and Jesse Plemons, who continues to be one of my favorite character actors working, and here steals the movie with his every line delivery (my favorite? “How would that be profitable for Frito Lay?”).
We need comedies like Game Night – as ultimately silly and inconsequential as the film is. The film is pure fun from beginning to end – and isn’t the type of comedy that makes you feel silly or stupid about for laughing afterwards. This is great studio comedy – something I thought no longer existed.
