Game Night (15.)
Directed by Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley.
Starring Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, Jesse Plemons, Billy Magnussen, Kyle Chandler and Sharon Horgan. 100 mins
It's a close run thing but I suspect my most objectionable experience in the cinema was The Game, the late 90s thriller in which millionaire Michael Douglas gets the gift of a role-playing game from his brother Sean, and then has his life be torn apart and is nearly killed only for, Spoiler, it to be revealed that it really had all been a big game, done to teach him a lesson about the value of life. The pathetic lame betrayal of that ending would have been gut-wrenching even if it hadn't been David Fincher's follow up to Seven. It was so utterly ***tish that even Sean Penn, a man who has easier access to utter ***tishness than any other, wasn't able to summon up the levels of utter ***tishness to make it believable.
Now though there is some small measure of restitution in Game Night, a comedy in which a role-playing kidnap detective game becomes real when the victim is genuinely kidnapped, while the friends still think it is a game.
There is a certain irony in casting Bateman (a performer born for the Michael Rodd role in Tomorrow’s World: The Motion Picture) as an ultra-competitive, sore loser, compulsive game player because I doubt he's ever been the first choice for any role. He's funny but in an apologetic, reserved way; even when he's playing neurotics he is so smooth your eyes can kind of glide past him. Here though Rachel McAdams has been cast as his wife, an equally competitive compulsive game player, and they are an inspired pairing.
The film itself is not much more than alright, a little bit too frantic for its own good, but when it is funny the laughs are big and the performers are engaging. There's probably a bit too much plot but in an age when comedy performers often just want to turn up and wing it, maybe we should appreciate a comedy where somebody has bothered to sit down beforehand and work out what will happen.
The oddest thing about the film is its cameos. Danny Huston and Michael C. Hall turn up in small but significant roles, big enough to warrant them giving up a day or two to be shown to be good sports. The odd one, the one that had me wondering if I was seeing things, is Jeffrey Wright. This very fine movie actor, the Felix Leiter to Daniel Craig's Bond, turns up uncredited in a minor role that is pure plot device, delivers some dull exposition dialogue, before being boffed on the head and forgotten about. Did he just sneak into the auditions without anyone recognising him?
Directed by Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley.
Starring Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, Jesse Plemons, Billy Magnussen, Kyle Chandler and Sharon Horgan. 100 mins
It's a close run thing but I suspect my most objectionable experience in the cinema was The Game, the late 90s thriller in which millionaire Michael Douglas gets the gift of a role-playing game from his brother Sean, and then has his life be torn apart and is nearly killed only for, Spoiler, it to be revealed that it really had all been a big game, done to teach him a lesson about the value of life. The pathetic lame betrayal of that ending would have been gut-wrenching even if it hadn't been David Fincher's follow up to Seven. It was so utterly ***tish that even Sean Penn, a man who has easier access to utter ***tishness than any other, wasn't able to summon up the levels of utter ***tishness to make it believable.
Now though there is some small measure of restitution in Game Night, a comedy in which a role-playing kidnap detective game becomes real when the victim is genuinely kidnapped, while the friends still think it is a game.
There is a certain irony in casting Bateman (a performer born for the Michael Rodd role in Tomorrow’s World: The Motion Picture) as an ultra-competitive, sore loser, compulsive game player because I doubt he's ever been the first choice for any role. He's funny but in an apologetic, reserved way; even when he's playing neurotics he is so smooth your eyes can kind of glide past him. Here though Rachel McAdams has been cast as his wife, an equally competitive compulsive game player, and they are an inspired pairing.
The film itself is not much more than alright, a little bit too frantic for its own good, but when it is funny the laughs are big and the performers are engaging. There's probably a bit too much plot but in an age when comedy performers often just want to turn up and wing it, maybe we should appreciate a comedy where somebody has bothered to sit down beforehand and work out what will happen.
The oddest thing about the film is its cameos. Danny Huston and Michael C. Hall turn up in small but significant roles, big enough to warrant them giving up a day or two to be shown to be good sports. The odd one, the one that had me wondering if I was seeing things, is Jeffrey Wright. This very fine movie actor, the Felix Leiter to Daniel Craig's Bond, turns up uncredited in a minor role that is pure plot device, delivers some dull exposition dialogue, before being boffed on the head and forgotten about. Did he just sneak into the auditions without anyone recognising him?
