Game Night

Game Night is a comedy movie starring Jason Bateman as Max, Rachel McAdams as Annie and some other great mostly comedy actors. The film follows Max and Annie as a very competitive couple who have a game night every weekend with two other couples. Max's more successful brother, Brooks, comes back to town after being away for a while and decides to host a game night at his place and invite his brother Max and his friends. Once they get there, Brooks reveals that he hired a local game company to come and fake kidnap him and the first couple that follows the clues left for them and finds him will win the game. Sounds like a good time, until it turns out that the kidnappers that took Brooks didn't actually work for the game company and it's up to Max and friends to save Brooks.

The most important part of a comedy movie is of course, that it provides laughs. Game Night was surprisingly funny, even though to be honest the trailers didn't really sell me much. I decided to give this a chance because of the great cast and the interesting set-up, and I ended up enjoying myself a lot. The characters are all likable and funny in their own ways. Most of the actors are playing characters you would expect them to be playing, if you've seen any their other work you'll understand what I mean. That doesn't work against the movie though, as all of these actors are great as the characters they play and know how to use those characters to deliver funny lines that you could totally see coming from them and never feel out of place. The humor consists of a lot of pop-culture references, some slap-stick and putting "normal" people in absurd situations. There were actually a couple of decent action moments in here too, nothing too fancy or groundbreaking, but enough to amp up the excitement throughout the movie. There were also some cool establishing shots in the movie that made the neighborhood they lived in look like a game board, small but cool detail.

I found myself laughing quite a bit throughout the whole movie and I had a lot of fun watching this movie. All of the actors have a chance to shine and be funny, and most of the time it works really well, with some minor misses here and there. If you like other Jason Bateman starring comedies, then you'll probably really like this one too. Comedies aren't usually movies I pay too much attention to, it's usually harder to find great comedies these days. I'm glad I gave this a shot though, I think this is indeed a great comedy.

Overall Grade: B+

We got two action movies coming out next week, none which i'm too interested in (Death Wish and Red Sparrow). I'll probably end up checking out Red Sparrow though, if not I'll be back to review A Wrinkle in Time and Thoroughbreds March 9th weekend.