Similarly to 2010’s Date Night and 2016’s Meet the Joneses, Game Night follows Annie (Rachel McAdams) and Max (Jason Bateman), a normal married couple whose game night tradition with their best friends somehow turns into a tangle with the international black market. It’s a comedy conceit as old as the genre. However, Game Night is more successful than many of the prior iterations of this story because it does one thing that those other movies didn’t: it trust its audience. By sticking to that philosophy, co-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein make Game Night is one of the best broad comedies to come out in the past couple years.
However, that’s not just because the state of studio broad comedies is dire. Daley and Goldstein are elegant with their execution of the plot and comedy. That’s to say, they gave equal thought to both. So often with these R-rated comedies do they go for the easy or raunchy joke with vulgarities being thrown out every other word. Instead, Game Night feels like its always working towards a larger joke rather than going for the quick punchline.
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Case in point, the movie spends a good amount of time setting up the premise and our cast of characters — similarly to Clue, which it feels like a spiritual successor of. Annie and Max met, dated, and eventually married because of their shared loves of games, something that they carry on in their lives together. Every week they host a game night with their other married friends Kevin (Lamorne Morris — a standout) and Michelle (Kyle Bunbury) and less-than-sharp friend Ryan (Billy Magnussen) who brings a different date to every gathering — they’re always young, blonde, and not the brightest.
Each character feels like an archeatype of a real young suburbanite — Annie and Max are struggling to conceive, Kevin and Michelle have been together since childhood (though that doesn’t mean they were always faithful), and Ryan never really grew up. And even though they fulfill archeatypes, the relationships between each character feels genuine. Conversations are filled with inside jokes and shared experiences. In particular, Annie and Max’s relationship is best defined. That’s partially thanks to Bateman and McAdams, whose chemisty is a driving force behind the movie.
Though Max is usually the master of games, when his brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler), a successful venture capitalist, comes to town he loses his edge. Max constantly feels overshadowed by his brother in every aspect and Brooks’ actions certainly don’t help — he begins driving Max’s dream car, throws his own elaborate game night. That elaborate game night is where are story truly begins. The group of friends and Ryan’s date Sarah (Sharon Horgan) — this time an older professional who Ryan brought to seem smarter — arrive at Brooks’ gorgeous rental house to learn that they are going to be a part of a hyperrealistic murder mystery in which one guest will be kidnapped and the rest of the group will have to rescue. After a delightful cameo from Jeffrey Wright as an actor playing an FBI agent for the game, two real kidnappers enter the house and abduct Brooks. Of course, the group is unaware that what happened was real and go about the game.
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Eventually, after several hilarious hijinks including a gun in a bar, a failed escape attempt through a skylight, and a hilarious cameo by Chelsea Peretti, the group realizes that Brooks was actually taken and this was not a game. They then all band together to race against the clock — and several baddies — to save Brooks from his captors.
Game Night is structured like the board games that the group would play. There are twists and turns that come out of nowhere, the delight of winning, the sting of defeat, and the feeling of comradarie. Daley and Goldstein navigate the plot with style — a one-shot sequence involving a faberge egg is a highlight — while mining every moment for laughs. However, none of it ever feels over-the-top somehow. Even when the twists get increasingly unrealistic, the characters reactions feel genuine. Even Jesse Plemons‘ scene-stealing turn as Gary, the group’s former recently divorced friend who seemingly lost any sense of humor feels grounded.
That’s not to say the humor isn’t uproarious. An attempted bullet removal, brush with Denzel Washington, and the most effective use of charades later and I was nearly bawling on the floor. It has its issues, the premise is perhaps milked for all its worth and we don’t get much pay off with every storyline, but Game Night is still a step in the right direction for broad comedy.
Hey! I’m Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic.
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