QR Film Reviews: Game Night

See this film. That’s the short of it, if you are a living person, chances are you will enjoy this film, so see it. Now, if you’re still reading you want to go more in depth I’m guessing, or you have nothing better to be doing. Anyway, let’s get into it.

The main focus is on Max (Jason Bateman, Arrested Development) and Annie (Rachel McAdams, Spotlight), a couple who fell in love and got married due to their shared competitiveness and love of gaming, both of board and any other type available. They, and a group of friends meet for a Game Night every Saturday at Max and Annie’s home, when during one of these nights, Max’s way more successful and handsome (apparently) brother, Brooks (Kyle Chandler, Argo) attends one of these nights and offers to host the next one. At this game night, a kidnapping-type game is set up by Brooks until he is legitimately kidnapped by kidnappers and its up to Max, Annie and their friends to find him.

Let’s go over the positives of this movie. First, Rachel McAdams. For anyone who doesn’t already know this, Rachel is a superb actress and she shines through as the star of this flick. Every scene with her is incredibly entertaining to say the least, with her well-meaning, just and slightly psychotic performance through the movie. She by far caused the most laughs in the theatre and her comedic timing and acting was brilliant the entire way through.

The supporting cast in this film was also truly excellent, with my personal favourites being Sharon Horgan’s sassy, intellectual Irish woman and Jesse Plemons’ creepy weird cop who is still can’t quite get over his divorce. No character feels wasted, and all feel necessary to moving the plot forward, having their own interesting and hilarious side plots to only add onto this film’s enjoyment.

To slightly gush over the technical side, the use of lighting and camera techniques in this movie are superb. There is one scene where a long shot technique is used (a shot without any cuts, see Birdman or John Wick) to full effect in a chase scene and it is truly beautiful.

This film is with its faults however. In all honesty I found Jason Bateman to be quite lacking in character, usually completely over shadowed by the much better McAdams. The character development for him is very generic and honestly not that interesting, only really becoming fun whenever having hilarious hijinks with much funnier and more memorable characters.

The film’s initial pacing is also considerably bad. The initial 20-25 minutes is slow, over-drawn and honestly quite dull, but the rest of the movie is a non-stop ride of pure enjoyment that does feel over a bit too quickly in a 100 minute movie, which is on the relative short-side to most releases nowadays, which did leave me wanting for more, which, to be fair is both a good thing and a bad thing.

Overall, the one thing you definitely need to know is that this film is brilliantly funny, not over reliant on adult humour and is surprisingly enjoyable and shocking. See this film. You won’t regret it!

Verdict – 3.7/5

Run Time: 100 Minutes

By Lee Smallwood