This week cinema trip saw us watch Game Night from the directing team of Daley & Goldstein, who also made the reboot of the National Lampoon Vacation series.
We were drawn to this horror comedy due to its impressive cast of Rachel McAdams; Jason Bateman; Kyle Chandler; Danny Huston; Jesse Plemons; Billy Magnussen & TV favourites Sharon Horgan (Catastrophe) & Lamore Morris (New Girl).
The film concerns an overly competitive couple Max (Bateman) & Annie (McAdams) who love winning at their regular game nights, with their friends Kevin (Morris) and his partner Michelle (Kylie Bunbury) plus Ryan (Magnussen) who has a different partner for every Game Night. Their neighbours were the fourth couple but following their split, they no longer invite Gary (Plemons), who has become rather strange.
Max has arranged an extra special Game Night to include his brother, Brooks (Chandler) who he has not seen in a long time. After an evening where Brooks completely embarrasses Max by recounting stories of him as a younger boy, in addition, he has turned up in the car of Max’s dreams, it comes clear that Max wants some sort of revenge.
At the end of the evening, Brooks invites them all to his rented accommodation whilst he is in town for a game night to end all game nights! As an incentive, the winner will get the keys to that dream car. The perfect response for Max and Annie to team up and put Brooks in his place.
All three couples, Ryan now with Sarah (Horgan) can not wait to find out what that game will involve, expecting charades etc but Brooks has hired a specific company to arrange a Murder/Mystery type of event. First, an FBI agent (Jeffrey Wright) tells what seems to be the rules of the event.
Whilst they wait for the game to begin, 2 masked invaders break into the house, attack the FBI agent and then Brooks, who they also kidnap & bundle him into a van.
It soon becomes apparent this was not part of the game. It turns out that Brooks has been hiding he is but in fact a criminal and has stolen a highly valuable Faberge egg from the Bulgarian (We won’t say who plays this character as it was a surprise for us so maybe for you too, this is a popular TV character though)
Brooks has sold the egg to wealthy Donald Anderton (Huston) and what happens is a race against time from the game players to recover the egg before the unthinkable happens.
This may sound like a really dark film but we have not laughed at a film this much in ages, the cast are all at the top of the game, with added cameos from the likes of Brooklyn 99’s Chelsea Peretti and a bizarre flashback story with a chance meeting with an actor who may not be who he says he is. With plenty of laughs and twists and a scene stealing little dog, we suggest you change your game night to a movie night =)
Watch the trailer here:
Pre-order the mover at Amazon here:
Never miss a BMAF blog. Receive email notifications when new posts are published by entering your email address in the subscription box on the top right-hand side of this page.
You can also like us on Facebook for more film news and content www.facebook.com/barkingmadaboutfilms/