They’re only pawns in the game

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This article was published 22/02/2018 (2247 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The comedy Game Night does not have much to offer the fan of sophisticated adult comedy.

What it does have, from time to time, is this weirdly beautiful visual effect in which various cityscapes are shot in shallow focus. It has the effect of making suburban streets or blighted urban districts look like quaintly artificial game boards.

Would that co-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein (Vacation) sustained that freshness of outlook through the whole movie.

Instead, the filmmakers rely heavily on the charm offensive of its two stars. Jason Bateman is Max and Rachel McAdams is Annie, two hyper-competitive people who get married on the strength of their mutual love of the game — any game.

Their mutual passion brings them together with another couple — Kevin (Lamorne Morris) and Michelle (Kylie Bunbury), and shallow bachelor idiot Ryan (Billy Magnusson) for weekly game nights.

The regularly scheduled gaming is interrupted by the arrival of Max’s conspicuously successful older brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler), the one person with the ability to subvert Max’s game with expertly administered psych-outs. Brooks invites the gang over to host his own game night, a “murder game,” in which Brooks will pretend to be kidnapped by actors from a role-playing service.

Alas, that would be the night Brooks is taken by real kidnappers. The gamers are a little slow on the uptake, but with the help of Ryan’s uncharacteristically intelligent date Sarah (Sharon Horgan), they all come to the realization that Brooks has really been kidnapped by real bad guys. They use their accumulated game-playing acumen to rescue him, except, unlike the game of Clue, this game has real guns.

The movie has its moments of tasty weirdness, many of them courtesy of Jesse Plemons as Max’s cop neighbour Gary, a former game-night regular before his divorce turned him into a creepy obsessive. A game of keep-away involving a Fabergé egg is also an impressive amalgamation of physical comedy and one-take technique.

Comedically, the movie is a distant cousin to the 2011 yukfest Horrible Bosses (on which Goldstein and Daley also had writing credits) in its blend of comedy, violence and highly unlikely plot points.

That movie too benefited from Bateman’s underlay of sardonic incredulity on top of a satiric premise that played with the idea of how easily a white-collar drone could turn homicidal.

Game Night has no such subtext. It just moves its characters around like game pieces on a board. When it comes to real comic inspiration, it never passes Go and does not collect $200.

randall.king@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @FreepKing