Game Night

Isn’t it nice when a film sur­pris­es you? Say when you find your­self chuck­ling mer­ri­ly as Rachel McAdams hap­less­ly tries to extract a bul­let from Jason Bateman’s arm while a bang­ing Cliff Mar­tinez synth extrav­a­gan­za blasts away in the back­ground. Such is the mag­ic of cinema.

In Game Night, Bate­man and McAdams are Max and Annie, a fierce­ly com­pet­i­tive cou­ple of unspec­i­fied occu­pa­tion who live for the week­ly social events they host for their friends, in which they play – you guessed it! – board games. Of course, beneath their per­fect façade, the cou­ple are fac­ing their own prob­lems, from Max’s poten­tial infer­til­i­ty to swerv­ing their creepy neigh­bour Gary (played by Jesse Ple­mons, nat­u­ral­ly). But they try to not let these issues mess with Monopoly.

A vis­it from Max’s broth­er (Kyle Chan­dler) cre­ates ten­sion among the group, as he sug­gests a new game with alto­geth­er high­er stakes – a cross between Tak­en and a mur­der mys­tery par­ty. The film’s trail­er admit­ted­ly sets out what’s to come, but there’s still a whole heap of fun to be had in get­ting to Game Night’s neat con­clu­sion. This is large­ly down to the cast, with Bate­man and McAdams game­ly sup­port­ed by Bil­ly Mag­nussen, Sharon Hor­gan, Lam­orne Mor­ris and Kylie Bun­bury. Each cou­ple gets their own piece of the fig­u­ra­tive sto­ry pie, and each makes the most of it.

The star of the show, how­ev­er, has to be Jesse Ple­mons. He puts in a mem­o­rably turn as Max and Annie’s police offi­cer neigh­bour, who has been uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly dumped from Game Night and wants back in. Armed with his men­ac­ing glare and an adorable West High­land Ter­ri­er, he steals every scene he’s in.

Direc­tors John Fran­cis Daley and Jonathan Gold­stein (whose next project is Flash­point for DC/​Warner Bros) make the most of a fair­ly mid­dling script. Thought has clear­ly gone into the stag­ing of the film, with some nice over­head cam­era shots paint­ing the sub­ur­ban neigh­bour­hood like a Monop­oly board, and Martinez’s score lend­ing a Dri­ve-style grav­i­tas to proceedings.

For the most part the film man­ages to avoid stray­ing too far into slap­stick ter­ri­to­ry, and although many of the jokes appear in the film’s trail­er, they still land with­in the con­text of the film. Is it sil­ly? Yes. Is it the most fun you’ll have at a cin­e­ma this week? Also yes. Game Night knows exact­ly what it is, and that’s no bad thing. Turn up, sit back, and enjoy 100 min­utes of sol­id action-comedy.