If you are going to go silly in a movie, you gotta go full silly. Embrace it with your entire heart, and the entire script. This allows the corny jokes to not feel so corny and the gems of hilarity to feel much more lol-worthy. Directing team John Francis Daley and Johnathan Goldstein have seemed to embrace this in their comedies. They failed miserably with their first outing, Vacation. Hopefully, their second movie Game Night created more more hidden gems (at least, they better have for DC fans and Ezra Miller’s sake).
They are directing the solo Flashpoint movie if y’all didn’t catch that. Game Night follows one of the get-togethers of ultra-competitive couple Max (Jason Bateman) and Annie (Rachel McAdams) and their friends. Max’s super successful brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) comes to town and stages a faux murder mystery game night for the group. But when Brooks gets kidnapped from the game, they don't know what is real and what is staged as they attempt to win the most epic game night of their lives.
This movie is silly. But you don’t care. You want to be a part of the group and a part of the games every step of the way. Game Night is hilarious, but not in the non-stop laughing, falling out of my chair type of way. More in the “I laughed about 2 or 3 times out loud but had a continuous smile on my face the entire time” type of way. You ever look back at a movie after seeing it and chuckle at memorable scenes saying “man, that was fun”? That is Game Night. Daley and Goldstein's second go round is so much more successful because the focus is on the story and not on outlandish comedy. This is an R-rated comedy, but it’s also a suspenseful mystery wrapped inside a Liam Neeson action flick. I want a sequel by next summer.
From the opening credits, the music, the visuals, and the camera work set a suspenseful tone. The music is energetic, thumping, and forceful. The visual effects often utilize actual game boards and pieces to transition into the real-life settings. The cinematography follows conventions you would more likely see in a Taken sequel than, say, a Horrible Bosses. This all creates a vibe of a suspense thriller that fits perfectly with the script’s comedic bits. One scene in particular masterfully blends all of this together in one long, uninterrupted take where you follow the path of a Faberge egg as it is tossed from room to room through a mansion. This non-stop, 2-minute action sequence, sums up what the movie does as a whole. It sucks you into the world and allows you to forget the convenient plot holes that are staring you straight in the face. Who cares if that door was conveniently unlocked? Or if that mob of people don't see you stealing from that safe that just happened to be left open? The viewer is having so much fun that those missteps just become part of the experience.
The biggest reason that Game Night is a sit-back-and-enjoy-the-ride type of experience is the great comedic timing and chemistry of the cast. Jason Bateman does his greatest Jason Bateman impression. He is the best version of every Michael Bluth he has ever played in every one of his movies since Arrested Development (you know he doesn’t do anything else; though, I admittedly have yet to see Ozark). Rachel McAdams is extremely charming and makes you wonder why she hasn’t been in more comedic roles since Mean Girls. But the two standouts are Jesse Plemons as the creepy, yet sadly sympathetic, next door neighbor Gary, and Billy Magnusson as the supposedly shallow and dumb friend Ryan (just wait until the end credits rolls to see why you will love these two characters even more). The rest of the cast, especially Chandler and Lamorne Morris, bounce well off of each other. They play their comedic bits right to the edge of fatigue, allowing the gags to run long enough to hit just the perfect amount of comical uncomfortableness.
Game Night feels like something old and something new. There are points that don’t seem to make sense, and bits that have been seen in a couple of other movies (probably other Bateman movies). But the cast’s charisma and the movies’ technical aspects create an experience in which you would want to revisit every week. Bring on Game Night 2: The Game of Life in Summer of 2019. I give Game Night 8/10 creepy backwards walks into dark hallways for no reason.
