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"Game Night," about game-loving partiers who get drawn into a web of danger, is a raucously funny film that has a knack for going right up to the edge of nastiness. Written by Mark Perez and directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein —who cowrote " Horrible Bosses " and "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone" and helmed the 2015 " Vacation "—it starts out borderline ludicrous and keeps piling on improbabilities, until it leaves our world behind and become an exercise in absurdity.

The main couple, Max and Annie ( Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams ), hosts a regular game night at their suburban home. A cleverly-edited opening montage shows that games like Pictionary, Scrabble and charades are the foundation of their relationship and led to their marriage. The game night covered in this movie includes Ryan ( Billy Magnussen ), a dimwitted friend of Annie's; Sarah ( Sharon Horgan ), Ryan's much smarter date; the husband-wife team of Kevin and Michelle ( Lamorne Morris and Kylie Bunbury ); and Max's estranged brother Brooks ( Kyle Chandler ), who's a success in ways that Max can only dream about. 

Then Brooks invites the guests out to his rich-guy house for a different kind of game night, modeled on those murder mystery dinner parties that became a fad a few years ago, and "Game Night" becomes a roller coaster ride, whisking the audience through broad slapstick, deadpan exchanges and imminent threats that sometimes erupt into mayhem. 

Brooks gets kidnapped in a home invasion that everybody else assumes is just part of the game, and threatened with murder if the others don't deliver a precious Faberge egg to a scary-voiced mastermind who's giving them orders from afar. The rest of the team splits up into pairs and tries to solve the mystery in their own way, their paths periodically re-crossing, only to diverge again. 

If you've seen " The Game " or other films in which an escapist adventure turns weird and frightening, you'll anticipate some but not all of the twists and turns of "Game Night," and you'll appreciate the way that the screenwriter and directors tie them to the psychology of the characters, and structure the film as a journey of personal as well as narrative discovery. The brothers' mutual resentment and rivalry is nearly as important here as it was in "The Game." Max and Annie's inability to conceive a child comes into play as well, as do the psychologies and pasts of other game night participants. A subplot about Kevin's obsession with figuring out whether Michelle was ever unfaithful to him has a terrific payoff that flips over on itself. There are juicy bits for supporting players as well, including Jeffrey Wright as an FBI agent, Danny Huston as a decadent rotter (his specialty), Michael C. Hall as a scary criminal known as The Bulgarian, and Jesse Plemons as the divorced and seemingly personality-free cop who lives in the same cul-de-sac as Max and Annie and seems obsessed with getting invited to game night again. None of these characters are quite as they appear on first or second glance. 

"Game Night" is a nearly perfect entertainment for adults over a certain age. There's a madcap car chase, a violent incident that leads to impromptu surgery, and a house party with echoes of the masked spectacle in " Eyes Wide Shut ," but it's all entwined with commentary about aging, disappointment, doomed romanticism and sibling rivalry. The actors put it all across with flair—especially Bateman and McAdams, who complete each other's thoughts so gracefully that they really do seem as if they've been married forever, and Plemons, who steals every scene he's in through deft underplaying. And while there are a few touching moments, the film never tries to claim sentimental or revelatory power it hasn't earned.

Control of tone is essential in any film that doesn't adhere to a familiar formula, and luckily for the audience, Daley and Goldstein are on top of things. They've got a knack for figuring how far is too far, pushing right up to the border, then stopping with one toe over the line. The understated cartoonishness, anchored in Bateman and McAdams' teamwork, helps a lot. Characters keep sustaining physical injuries that would kill or incapacitate people in reality, only to bounce back and resume the game, but their mishaps are calibrated so that they just seem to smack a bit of sense into them, like an exploding cigar or an anvil on the head in a Bugs Bunny short. This is one of the best surprises of a still-young movie year: a comedy that takes nothing seriously except fun.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Film credits.

Game Night (2018)

Rated R for language, sexual references and some violence

100 minutes

Rachel McAdams as Annie

Jason Bateman as Max

Kyle Chandler as Brooks

Billy Magnussen as Ryan

Sharon Horgan as Sarah

Lamorne Morris as Kevin

Kylie Bunbury as Michelle

Jesse Plemons as Gary

Michael C. Hall as The Bulgarian

Jeffrey Wright as FBI Agent

Danny Huston as Donald Anderton

Chelsea Peretti as Glenda

• John Francis Daley

Cinematographer

• Barry Peterson
• Jamie Gross
• Gregory Plotkin
• Cliff Martinez

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Review: ‘Game Night’ Has a Winning Rachel McAdams and Charades With a Twist

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By Glenn Kenny

• Feb. 21, 2018

“Game Night” is, for the most part, a conventional, and conventionally vulgar, Contemporary Romantic Comedy With Lessons. Its central couple, Max and Annie, played by Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams, are avid board-game-and-trivia enthusiasts who are stuck in the fertility department. They’re having trouble conceiving because Max’s sperm are, according to his doctor, insecure. That probably has something to do with Max’s inferiority complex about his older brother Brooks ( Kyle Chandler ), an ostensible hotshot who decides one evening to take Max and Annie’s weekly couples game night up a notch by staging a kidnapping mystery.

Only the kidnapping is real, or seems to be. The gun Brooks leaves behind is very much real and loaded, as Max learns when one of its rounds goes through his arm. It’s at junctures like this when the movie becomes less conventional, although it never soars. The dialogue leans so heavily on pop culture references you have to wonder whether the film’s screenwriter, Mark Perez, is as insecure as his creation Max.

The directors, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, who were behind the repellent 2015 film “Vacation,” show relative restraint here, in spite of a set piece that involves an adorable little dog getting its immaculate white coat doused with blood. And all the cast members — particularly the friends and neighbors played by Chelsea Peretti, Billy Magnussen, Sharon Horgan, Lamorne Morris and Jesse Plemons (who, as an uptight cop, delivers a deliberately robotic idea of a Matt Damon impersonation) — are very funny when they get the opportunity to be. And the movie is a pointed reminder that Ms. McAdams is one of cinema’s most accomplished and appealing comic actresses. It’s almost heartbreaking to contemplate how amazing she would be in a new comedy that was more than intermittently O.K.

An earlier version of this review misstated the year that the film “Vacation” was released. It was 2015, not 2011.

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Rated R for language, gunplay, sexual innuendo and other contemporary romantic comedy commonplaces. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes.

Film Review: ‘Game Night’

Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams lead a party-game night gone real in a clever, trip-wired comic thriller that keeps pranking the audience.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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Party games like Pictionary, Charades, or Trivial Pursuit aren’t the same thing as real life. But one reason games like these never go out of style is that they’re about a lot of things, like competition and quick strategizing and supreme knowledge of pop culture, that are now survival skills in many a corporate office (and more than a few marriages).

“ Game Night ,” a trip-wired suspense comedy about six middle-class nerds who get together for a weekly Tostitos-and-beer game night, only to stumble into a simulated reality game that’s staged as if it were a matter of life or death (and here’s the trick: maybe it is), is the sort of cinematic gimcrack that’s all perilous mechanics, whipsaw reversals, and unabashed contrivance. It’s like “Deathtrap” recast as a megaplex thriller that keeps pranking the audience. The gimmicky, mouse-trap fun of it hinges on one’s willingness to see the game board yanked out from under you. 

That said, if “Game Night” were just a concoction, it might grow tiresome awfully fast. There’s a nagging speck of humanity, or at least reasonably quick and cutting marital satire, that keeps the movie afloat.

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It was directed by the team of John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, who were co-writers on “Horrible Bosses” (2011) and “Spider-Man: Homecoming” (2017), and there’s an echo of the former film’s knockabout misanthropy in their rollicking staging. Yet “Game Night” is a defter movie than “Horrible Bosses.” The script, by Mark Perez, is immersed in the kind of scholastic pop showboating that hooks you as soon as Jason Bateman , as an arrested brainiac who considers himself a master gamer, tries and fails to come up with clues to prompt the name “Edward Norton.” I’m not claiming this is the equivalent of 1930s screwball comedy, but the impulse — to tickle the audience by staying one light verbal step ahead of it — isn’t so different.

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The actors, too, are more than walking props. Bateman and Rachel McAdams play the married Max and Annie, who are smartly flirtatious and nicely matched (the two can’t sit around the living room without engaging in a duel of paper football), until the subject of having children comes up. At that point, we can see that game night functions as Max’s civilized version of a man cave: his weekly ritual of refusing to grow up.

Max, played by Bateman with a more addled version of his usual genial dyspepsia, has spent his life chafing under the shadow of his older brother, Brooks (Kyle Chandler), a venture capitalist who drives a 1976 Corvette Stingray (Max’s boyhood dream car). It’s Brooks, with his aggressive gleam, who invites the couple and their friends over to his suburban palace for a simulated-reality game night, one that’s built around a faux kidnapping and other imitation dangerous situations. But when the kidnappers barge in, they look awfully real; so do the punches that reduce one person to a heap crumpled on the floor. This particular game is about to teach Max and Annie a crucial life lesson: The couple that dodges mobster bullets and discovers the meaning of badass together stays together.

In a Rube Goldberg caper like this one, with its roots in glide-through-the-dark-side comedies like “After Hours,” it’s all about the execution — about how writing, directing, and acting fuse with a timing just nimble enough to be funny and implausibly convincing. That quality is there when Max and Annie enter the roadside dive where the fake (or are they real?) kidnappers are holed up, with Bateman’s smugly clueless Max ordering a Harvey Wallbanger to test the biker bartender’s cocktail chops and McAdams’ Annie waving her plastic gun around and quoting Amanda Plummer in “Pulp Fiction” ( “Any of you f—ing pr—ks move…!!” ). These two are hilarious because, for a moment, they really think they’re in a movie.

There’s pleasure, as well, in the ongoing squabble between Michelle (Kylie Bunbury) and Kevin (Lamorne Morris), who keeps pushing her to name the celebrity she slept with when their relationship was on hiatus. Could it be Denzel Washington? (The flashback that reveals the answer is a hoot, though not as drop-dead funny as Morris’ Denzel impersonation.) It’s there, too, in Jesse Plemons’ scene-stealing turn as Gary, the sullen divorced cop next door whose lonely desire to rejoin Max and Annie for their game night is so consuming that he’s a total passive-aggressive stalker-pest. Plemons, who’s like Matt Damon channeling Philip Seymour Hoffman on a very dark day, takes a role that’s a walking punchline and turns him into someone who resembles an actual character.

Daley and Goldstein, who started off as actors, have co-directed one previous feature, the 2015 holiday-road reboot “Vacation,” but the sign that they’re instinctive filmmakers, with a bold sense of comedy structure, comes in the sequence they stage, with serpentine ingenuity, at the home of a crime boss (Danny Huston) who has the film’s MacGuffin — a Fabergé egg — locked in his safe. Our team of gamesters infiltrate this endless sprawling lair, and the sequence that follows, which includes a human dog fight staged for the benefit of rich people, suggests “Eyes Wide Shut” crossed with “Fight Club” (references that the movie is knowing enough to make about itself), climaxing in a roundelay of Fabergé egg–tossing all done in a one seemingly endless shot. The movie itself becomes a game, and the fact that it’s making up its rules as it goes along isn’t necessarily a disadvantage.

It goes on after that — maybe a bit too much. Even at 100 minutes, “Game Night” pushes its premise to the wall of synthetic escapism. Yet the movie manipulates its audience in cunning and puckish ways. It’s no big whoop, but you’re happy to have been played.

Reviewed at Warner Bros., New York, Feb. 13, 2018. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 100 MIN.

• Production: A Warner Bros. release of a New Line Cinema, Davis Entertainment, Aggregate Films production. Producers: Jason Bateman, John Davis, John Fox. Executive producer: Marc S. Fischer.
• Crew: Directors: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein. Screenplay: Mark Perez. Camera (color, widescreen): Barry Peterson. Editors: David Egan, Jamie Gross, Gregory Plotkin.
• With: Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, Kyle Chandler, Jesse Plemons, Billy Magnussen, Sharon Horgan, Lamorne Morris, Kylie Bunbury, Michael C. Hall, Jeffrey Wright, Danny Huston, Chelsea Peretti.

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Game Night Will Make You Wish Rachel McAdams Still Made Comedies

In 2017, I wrote what felt like many words about the fall of the mainstream comedy, from the workshopped-into-anonymity flops ( Rough Night ) to the dead-on-arrival studio unloadings ( The House ). Someday in film-history textbooks, they’ll write about the arc that began with the mid-aughts shedding of the “alt-” from alt-comedy. The subsequent bro-driven, smart-stupid, and very profitable salad days of Knocked Up, Superbad, and The Hangover led to the critical and commercial apex of Bridesmaids and the ascendancy of Melissa McCarthy, and continued into a long denouement, as Hollywood repeatedly reconfigures the same handful of elements all the way to 2018 — with notably diminishing returns. It’s a shame to watch, because it’s not as if the comedy world isn’t continuing to produce all kinds of great talent — it’s just that the lumbering process of putting together a mid-budget studio comedy feels ill-suited for their skills and the tastes of audiences alike.

Out of this morass comes Game Night, a film that from the outside would appear to be a continuation of this downward trend. (What industry study has convinced Hollywood that we won’t see a movie if it isn’t about some kind of Night? Date Night, Rough Night, Game Night … maybe it’s time to reboot the 1996 Stanley Tucci–Tony Shalhoub restaurant dramedy Big Night ?) Co-directed by the writer and director of 2011’s Horrible Bosses and starring Bosses star Justin Bateman (still our current go-to beta-male protagonist, and one of the biggest beneficiaries of this latter-day comedy slump), there’s certainly no reason to believe that Game Night is out to revolutionize feature-length comedy. And it doesn’t, but it’s also confident and classically entertaining enough to withstand some kind of “I’ll watch it when it comes on cable” test of time, aside from an errant Skrillex reference or two.

Max (Bateman) and Annie (Rachel McAdams) are a middle-class married couple who’ve settled into the kind of comfortable groove that usually is the catalyst for a wacky comedy. Their life consists of intermittent, inconclusive conversations about whether or not to have kids, and their weekly game night with their other couple friends (Lamorne Morris, Kylie Bunbury, Billy Magnussen and, eventually the fantastic Sharon Horgan of Catastrophe ). This settled peace is rudely interrupted by the arrival of Max’s pompous older brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler, clearly enjoying playing against type) who drops into town on “business” and hijacks Max and Annie’s game night by inviting their friends over to his opulent rental house for an immersive Mystery Night game. Of course, in the style of The Man Who Knew Too Little or, uh … Rough Night, a real-life crime intrudes on the supposed performance, sending a bunch of fragile-ego softies out on a flailing rescue mission.

The script by Mark Perez knows better than to let the ruse go on for too long, instead packing the second half with a series of “gotcha” twists that keep the audience constantly on the edge of credulousness. The bulk of the comedy is situational, the characters (aside from Magnussen’s riotously dumb himbo) are not types so much as they are a pack of petty, hypercompetitive straight men and women reacting to the escalating intensity of the supposed “game” they find themselves in. Bateman is doing a sharper-than-average version of the sighing and dead-eyed reaction shots we’ve seen him do before, but the stealth MVP is McAdams, who appeared on most of our radars as an effortless comedic actor in Mean Girls, but who has rarely been called upon to do the same since. Annie is twitchy and gung-ho, but also so soft-spoken that at times I wondered if her dialogue was actually recorded at a lower volume, making her stressful mutterings as she clocks guys with a fire extinguisher all the more strange and funny. There’s a standout scene between McAdams and Bateman in which Annie attempts to remove a bullet from Max’s arm, which utilizes a squeaky toy, a bottle of Chardonnay, and dual nausea to sublime comic effect. The moments where Game Night stands out are these, where the absurdity of the details can be the sum total of the joke.

The film also stars Jesse Plemons as Max and Annie’s pathetic, kinda- off neighbor who has been edged out of the group after he divorced his wife and got weird. His dead-eyed longing to be asked back into the group (as well as his too-convenient-to-not-turn-up-later occupation as a cop) turns out to be one of the more relevant through lines of the film, and the only thing that convinced me that Game Night wasn’t a late-stage market-researched title for the film. (After all, there aren’t many board games to be seen after 15 minutes or so, though there is a very cute use of charades at a crucial climactic moment.) The film is about the same kind of social overcompensation that virtually any other mainstream comedy is about, but it feels comfortable with this, not desperate to pile on the raunchy bells and whistles in an effort to feel more current. It won’t fix the studio comedy, but it’s a welcome, watchable outlier for now.

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Kooky comedy Game Night is a winner: EW review

Rachel McAdams, a Third Eye Blind joke, and the speed of humor keep the Mark Perez-penned script moving

Haven’t we all seen a fun evening go a little off the rails? The hostess runs out of queso dip too soon; your drunk boss breaks a vase; somebody maybe throws up in the hamper. In the movies, though — or at least in a certain kind of black comedy — “messy” tends to meet a whole different standard: Tranquilized tigers in the bathroom, accidental kidnappings, drug raids, a dead prostitute or two.

Game Night belongs to that particular brand of big-screen crazy (see also: Rough Night , Date Night , Office Christmas Party , The Hangover , The Night Before , This Is the End ) where chaos reigns and logic fails, but you keep laughing just about hard and often enough not to care. The plot jump-off is pretty much exactly what the title implies, with Max and Annie (Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams) meeting cute over pub trivia in the opening credits and carrying on their shared passion for fierce rounds of Jenga, charades, and Settlers of Catan alongside friends like the happily coupled Michelle and Kevin (Kylie Bunbury and New Girl ’s Lamorne Morris) and blissful idiot Ryan (Billy Magnussen), who tends to bring a new date every time — typically some gorgeous, vapid millennial who probably can’t spell millennial .

But on this particular evening, Ryan has roped in a ringer, his brainy Irish officemate Sarah ( Catastrophe ’s brilliant Sharon Horgan), and there’s another special guest, Max’s older brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler). He’s the cooler sibling in every way; suave, confident, carelessly rich. He’s also got his own idea for upping the Game Night ante by paying an adult-fun adventure company to arrange one of those scavenger hunts with hidden clues and for-hire “bad guys.” The prize is bigger too: the keys to his Corvette Stingray.

Except Brooks isn’t actually a law-abiding businessman, and the masked thugs who show up aren’t actors. Max, Annie et al. don’t know that yet, but they’ll learn over the next 100 minutes, in which Third Eye Blind becomes a plot point, a small dog drinks blood, and somebody gets sucked into a jet engine. The script, by Mark Perez ( Accepted ), tosses off a certain kind of surreal ratatat humor at RPMs high enough that the jokes that don’t land hardly register. And Jesse Plemons is great as Gary, the cop next door with an affect so flat and a gaze so unblinkingly intense you genuinely wonder whether his basement is full of Beanie Babies or pickled body parts. (Michael C. Hall, Danny Huston, Jeffrey Wright, and Chelsea Peretti also make small, memorable cameos).

Chandler doesn’t really get much to do beyond bluff and be Duct-taped, but Bateman stays busy doing his Wry Everyguy thing, a beta bro with the best dry one-liners. And McAdams, whose comedic skills have gone unsung for way too long, is dizzy fun. The whole movie is, actually, even if it pretty much evaporates on impact — a kooky, vicarious loop of Mad Libs meets Cards Against Humanity, where whoever’s holding the popcorn last wins. B+

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‘game night’: film review.

Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams play a couple whose quiet night with friends turns into a race to solve a mystery in 'Game Night,' an action comedy directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein ('Vacation').

By Jon Frosch

Senior Editor, Reviews

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The current state of the studio comedy is so dire that it’s tempting to grade a competently confected trifle like Game Night on a curve. The movie is graced with gifted performers, and has been shot and edited with above-average panache. There are no slow-mo group struts (huzzah!) or strenuous scatological set pieces. And the first 10 minutes are zippy and charming, presenting the premise — two fiercely competitive board/parlor game aficionados (played by Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams ) meet cute, marry and institute a weekly “game night” at their house — in lively, economical fashion.

But forget the curve: Game Night really isn’t very good. And with such a vast slate of small-screen comedic options — ranging from low-brow to high, broad to eccentrically specific, and including network standouts like Black-ish and cable/streaming gems such as  Veep , Insecure , Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and many more — it’s hard to argue that anyone should spend time or money on this.

Release date: Feb 23, 2018

Of Game Night ’s deficiencies, the most glaring is its failure to multitask: The film exhausts itself — and the viewer — with a busy, uninteresting caper storyline, while neglecting to nurture the humor, or the characters, beyond the most basic level. There are chuckles here and there, but a striking absence of belly laughs; Girls Trip it’s decidedly not. (It’s not even as fun as the slapdash Rough Night , another recent farce about friends whose nocturnal festivities take a turn for the fatal.)

The marital action/crime comedy, in which couples work through their issues over the course of unforeseen adventures, is a subgenre with a spotty record (anyone remember Killer s?  Did You Hear About the Morgans ? Keeping Up With the Joneses ?). The best ones — the earlier  Thin Man movies, Manhattan Murder Mystery , True Lies and The Incredibles , to name some — use intrigue-filled plots essentially as elaborate pretexts to probe and poke at the human relationships at their center. In other words, the action serves the purpose of the comedy, not vice versa. Game Night , alas, seems to have missed that memo.

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Directed by Horrible Bosses and Spider-Man: Homecoming scribes John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (whose previous collaboration behind the camera was the mirthless Vacation ), Game Night centers on Max (Bateman) and Annie (McAdams) and their friends, mimbo Ryan (Billy Magnussen) and married childhood sweethearts Kevin and Michelle (Lamorne Morris and Kylie Bunbury). United by their passion for Scrabble, Monopoly and the like, the gang gets together regularly — usually joined by Ryan’s plus-one du jour — for game night. Not in attendance, much to his chagrin, is Max and Annie’s creepy cop neighbor Gary (Jesse Plemons), who’s been cut from the invite list since his wife left him.  

All we learn about Max and Annie, aside from their love of games, is that they live in the kind of antiseptic suburban comfort that seems to be a given for protagonists in these films — and they’re having trouble conceiving. The couple’s fertility struggle yields one of Game Night ’s funnier scenes: “I’m not loving your semen,” a tactless doctor (Camille Chen) tells Max as she glances over some test results. The doc thinks stress is affecting Max’s sperm quality; Annie attributes that stress to the fact that Max’s successful, type-A bully of an older brother, Brooks ( Kyle Chandler ), has just moved back to town.

Meanwhile, Brooks invites Annie, Max and their friends — this time, Ryan shows up with an atypically non-ditsy date, Sarah (Sharon Horgan of Amazon’s wonderful Catastrophe ) — to “a game night to remember” at his mansion. Ever the one-upper, Brooks announces that he’s hired a company specialized in devising complex mysteries for guests to solve. Cue the arrival of an agent (an uncredited Jeffrey Wright), who hands each couple a dossier full of clues. Then, suddenly, a pair of masked thugs bursts in and knocks out the agent, proceeding to beat up Brooks and drag him away bound and gagged.

Of course, that last development wasn’t part of the game — it turns out Brooks is mixed up in some real-life crime — but the couples are too busy marveling at the realism of it all to understand that. Assuming the object is to see who can find Brooks first, they split up and diligently tackle the clues in the dossier.

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The rest of Game Night unfolds as a frantic series of run-ins, chases, fights and gags. A few are executed with flair: One set piece, filmed in a swooping, swerving continuous shot, finds the friends trying to make off with a Faberge egg they believe will help them get Brooks back. Others are mildly embarrassing (McAdams slinking around a bar singing along to a Third Eye Blind song is a low point). Most are just shruggingly generic.

What’s particularly frustrating is that an early, all-too-brief stretch of the film, in which the characters sit around playing Charades, is giddier and more alive than any of the high jinks that follow. You may wish the movie had simply unfolded as a series of loosey-goosey regular game-night scenes rather than straining so hard for shoot-’em-up cred.

Screenwriter Mark Perez ( Accepted ) displays a knack for throwaway lines — “What’s that, Head & Shoulders? Selsun Blue?” Brooks asks Max, sniffing him as he leans in for a hug — but his attempts at screwball patter are shaky. It’s up to the cast to try to inject a bit of flavor into the insipid dialogue, which they do with professionalism. The reliably reliable Bateman and the always appealing McAdams play nicely off one another, even if the latter’s role is almost insultingly thin. And, as he did in Ingrid Goes West , Magnussen offsets his Harlequin-novel looks with a scene-stealing streak of weirdness.

The Most Wasted Supporting Player award goes to Horgan, who has inexcusably little to do. Runners-up are Morris and Bunbury, saddled with characters never given a chance to evolve beyond an uninspired running joke about which celebrity Michelle has slept with.

One conspicuously fine contribution is Cliff Martinez’s propulsive electronic score, which makes the movie sound much hipper than it is.

Production companies: Aggregate Films, Davis Entertainment, New Line Cinema Distributor: Warner Bros. Cast: Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, Billy Magnussen, Sharon Horgan, Lamorne Morris, Kylie Bunbury, Jesse Plemons, Danny Huston, Chelsea Peretti, Michael C. Hall, Kyle Chandler Directors: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein Screenwriter: Mark Perez Producers: John Davis, John Fox, Jason Bateman, James Garavente Executive producers: Toby Emmerich, Richard Brener, Michael Disco, Dave Neustadter, Marc S. Fischer Director of photography: Barry Peterson Production designer: Michael Corenblith Editors: Jamie Gross, Gregory Plotkin, Dave Egan Costume designer: Debra McGuire Composer: Cliff Martinez Casting: Rich Delia

Rated R, 100 minutes

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'Game Night' Review: A Satisfying, Sometimes Uneven Blend Of Comedy And Thriller

More than two decades later, David Fincher's dark thriller The Game now seems almost prescient in its depiction of a company that stages "games" for unwitting participants. There are plenty of outlets for people who just like to play board games or trivia in 2018, but escape rooms and more elaborate interactive murder-mysteries are vastly more common and popular now than they were in the late 1990s.

So the premise of the new dark comedy/thriller Game Night no longer feels quite as fantastical as it might have, even if the movie's attempt to balance genres doesn't always quite work in its favor.

Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams play Max and Annie, who first meet as rival trivia-team leaders, then quickly fall in love and get married. Eventually, they hold game nights at their house weekly with a few of their friends: fellow married couple Kevin and Michelle ( Lamorne Morris and Kylie Bunbury ) and well-meaning doofus Ryan ( Billy Magnussen ) and whichever bimbo date he brings each week. When Max's boisterous older brother Brooks ( Kyle Chandler ) takes a break from his supposedly lucrative venture-capital job, he offers to hold an "epic" game night at his very fancy rented house. Once there, he reveals that everyone's going to participate in an interactive mystery, in which one of them is kidnapped. It turns out that Brooks is the abductee, but the five friends, as well as Ryan's latest date, Sarah ( Sharon Horgan ), are eventually shocked to realize that Brooks has been abducted for real, and the line between the game and reality has been starkly blurred. Game Night isn't always able to handle its tenuous balance between genres. Some of the film is yet another modern Apatow-esque comedy about friends and couples struggling to grow up, but then the second half especially leans into being a tense action-thriller with lives at stake. That said, directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein , as well as writer Mark Perez , do a much better job than would seem likely considering the slightly convoluted setup. Daley and Goldstein, whose previous directing effort, the 2015 remake of Vacation , was needlessly mean-spirited and unfunny, are also surprisingly committed to making Game Night feel ominous and brooding. The Cliff Martinez score feels less apropos to a wacky comedy, and closer to something like his work in Drive or Spring Breakers . Daley, Goldstein, and cinematographer Barry Peterson also go to great lengths to make the characters — in wide shots — look like literal pawns in a larger game, and chase scenes are shot with an unexpected but welcome sharpness.

In the midst of this darkness, of course, Game Night does hit a lot of its jokes. Bateman brings his typically dry charm to the part of Max. Even with the fairly useless subplot regarding whether or not Max wants kids, Bateman makes him more than a bland straight-man type. McAdams shines equally well, in spite of primarily appearing in more dramatic fare as of late. Annie is, thankfully, an equal partner in the gaming madness here as opposed to a passive female character as is sometimes the case in modern comedies. The surprisingly vast ensemble also has some standouts, such as Magnussen's gleeful dumbo and Jesse Plemons as Max and Annie's very creepy police-officer neighbor. (That said, it is close to a cardinal sin that Game Night cast both Coach Taylor and Landry/Lance from Friday Night Lights without putting them on screen for more than a few seconds together.)

The tension between the two genres at the core of Game Night sometimes causes the overall thing to be a bit shaky. The film's most notable gross-out sequence occurs right after Max and Annie realize that Brooks' abduction is no longer part of a game, but a very real and dangerous problem; they figure this out when Annie accidentally shoots Max with a gun that she had presumed was a toy, and then she has to dislodge the bullet from his forearm. Suffice to say, this makeshift medical procedure doesn't go as planned, and while it's meant to be a comic high point, it's one of the few moments in the film where the reality of what's going on (as well as the fact that it's just not very funny to watch a well-meaning character toss a gun around like it's a football) only serves to suck the comedy out of the situation.

But otherwise, Game Night manages to be both surprising and well-executed in its comic and suspenseful moments. (A running gag surrounding Denzel Washington enables Morris to indulge in his very convincing vocal impersonation of the A-lister, too.) Jason Bateman's track record with movie comedies as of late, from the Horrible Bosses films to Identity Thief to Bad Words , has been spotty at best. Luckily, the offbeat and loose Game Night mostly is able to find the sweet spot between two genres that don't often meet in the middle, suggesting the right balance for performer and story.

/Film Rating: 7 out of 10

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Dove Review

Game Night is a witty, laugh-out-loud movie that will have you nodding your head while thinking, “Yes, I can relate to that.” This imaginative storyline features Gary (Jesse Plemons), the off-beat (everyone has known someone like this guy) next door neighbor to Max (Jason Bateman) and his wife Annie (Rachel McAdams). He used to be invited to their game night once a week when he was married to Debbie—who was really the one Max and Annie liked. But now Gary and Debbie are divorced and Max and Annie attempt to avoid inviting “weird” Gary to game nights. But the humor lies in the fact that Gary suspects this. Gary is outside his house when his neighbors arrive home from grocery shopping. Noticing all the food they bought, he asks if they are having a game night. They tell him no. Then he asks why they bought three bags of chips. “They had a three-for-the-price-of-one deal,” says Max. “That would be unprofitable for the store to do,” Gary observes.

And, as far as those “relatable” moments, who hasn’t seen a couple argue about petty jealousies? That’s what a couple, Kevin and Michelle, do—they bicker about a man Michelle once briefly hooked up with while she and Kevin were “taking a break” in their relationship. When they have a few drinks, the bickering gets worse. And who hasn’t had an obnoxious self-absorbed relative? In this case, it’s Max’s rich brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler), who went out and bought a Stingray for himself because he knows Max wanted one from the time they were kids. Brooks like people to know he’s rich, and he flashes constant reminders to everyone. In one comedic scene, Max and Annie are seeing a fertility specialist, who believes the couple’s infertility problem might be Max’s fault and tells him she’s not loving his semen. The specialist says it with such a straight face that it is hard not to laugh. Then, she seems more interested in getting a date with Brooks, Max’s brother, than actually helping the couple out.

Meanwhile, Brooks insists on having a game night at his luxurious home, and he manages to set up a “live” game night with actors coming in to kidnap and kill a victim, and the rest of the gang has to figure out “who done it.” Unfortunately, Brooks has been dealing in some shady matters, and some real-life kidnappers come to his home, knock out a federal agent who was there, and actually kidnap Brooks. One of the many funny scenes involves Max and Annie tracking Brooks and the bad guys down at a local bar. Annie gets ahold of what she assumes is a fake gun and begins waving it around, cussing out the bad guys and telling them to hit the floor. When they all learn it isn’t a game and that the gun is real, the adventure and action really kicks in, with more humorous moments to follow. Another relatable moment for the audience is when Gary is welcomed back to the gang because of something good he does. Don’t we all overlook faults in people because of the good points they have?

The film is R-rated so, although it is highly entertaining at times, it also contains strong content such as harsh language throughout and several sexual innuendos and comments. So, we can’t award this movie our Dove Seal.

Dove Rating Details

Several scenes of guns being held on people and people being shot; man is shot in his arm, and blood and the bullet hole are seen; man with bloody arm bleeds on a cat and on the carpet; a knife is thrown and hits the same man in the bullet hole; a very bloody chest and mouth seen on a man who has been shot; a brutal fight contest in which several men are punched and have bloody faces and wounds; people are hit with objects including glass broken over their heads; a man is sucked up into the engine of an airplane.

Several sexual comments and innuendos including oral sex references and a young man giving himself "self love"; a woman admits to sleeping with another man while she and her boyfriend were taking a break; husband and wife kiss.

Language throughout including several utterances of GD; J; JC; the F-bomb including MF and F you; S; D, Da*mit; A, and other words including sexual slang for testicles and male genitalia

Several bar scenes and party scenes with drinking including beer, vodka, champagne and a Harvey Wallbanger

Cleavage in a few scenes

Tension between characters; couples argue; a woman sticks a gun in her mouth playfully, not realizing it is a real gun.

More Information

Film information, dove content.

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Game Night Parent Guide

It's all fun and games until somebody gets shot..

Release date February 23, 2018

It was supposed to be a game, but as a group of friends tries to solve a murder mystery, it starts looking like what they have gotten themselves into something that is anything but child's play.

Run Time: 100 minutes

Official Movie Site

Game Night Rating & Content Info

Why is Game Night rated R? Game Night is rated R by the MPAA for language, sexual references and some violence.

Page last updated May 22, 2018

News About "Game Night"

From the Studio: Bateman and McAdams star as Max and Annie, whose weekly couples game night gets kicked up a notch when Max’s charismatic brother, Brooks (Kyle Chandler), arranges a murder mystery party, complete with fake thugs and faux federal agents. So, when Brooks gets kidnapped, it’s all part of the game…right? But as the six uber-competitive gamers set out to solve the case and win, they begin to discover that neither this game—nor Brooks—are what they seem to be. Over the course of one chaotic night, the friends find themselves increasingly in over their heads as each twist leads to another unexpected turn. With no rules, no points, and no idea who all the players are, this could turn out to be the most fun they’ve ever had…or, it’s game over. - Warner Brothers

Cast and Crew

Game Night is directed by John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein and stars Jesse Plemons, Rachel McAdams, Jason Bateman .

The most recent home video release of Game Night movie is May 22, 2018. Here are some details…

Game Night releases to home video (Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy) with the following extras: - An Unforgettable Evening: Making Game Night - Featurette - Gag Reel

Related home video titles:

"Positive Messages Marred by Too Much Lewd Dialogue"

What You Need To Know:

Miscellaneous Immorality: Lots of lying and cheating, which is rebuked, and a few racist comments.

More Detail:

In the movie GAME NIGHT, Max (Jason Bateman) and Annie (Rachel McAdams) are the perfect match for each other because they share an obsession with playing games. They get married and try to get pregnant, but have difficulty. A weekly tradition Max and Annie have is a game night at their home with their best friends.

There’s Ryan, a really unintelligent, but handsome young man who shows up at every game night with a new girlfriend. Then, there’s Kevin and Michelle, who have been together ever since high school. Max and Annie tell their friends to show up to their house sneakily, because their next-door neighbor Gary, a police officer, always wants to be invited, but he’s super weird and creepy.

On this particular game night, Max’s super successful brother Brooks is in town and will be joining their game night. Brooks is always putting Max down and always beats Max at every game, which drives Max, and Annie, crazy.

When Brooks rolls into the secret game night, Gary finds out that he was excluded, and Max and Annie’s cover is blown. Afterwards, Brooks tells the group he’ll host game night next week and promises it will be the best game night they’ve ever had.

The next week, everyone shows up to Brooks swanky mansion, and Brooks reveals that they aren’t actually going to play a board game. He has set up a kidnap mystery night where a group of actors will kidnap someone, and the group has to follow a series of riddles to solve the crime. Max is skeptical, but goes along. When two men barge through the door and start fighting Brooks, it’s clear they’re actually real criminals trying to take Brooks, but the group simply watches because they think it’s all part of the game.

Will the group be able to find Brooks and save him from legitimate danger? Also, what secret life is Brooks living to result in him getting kidnapped?

GAME NIGHT’s basic story is clearly a copycat of Bill Murray’s hilarious 1994 movie THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE, but it still finds ways of being clever and unpredictable. The characters are unique, and many game enthusiasts will relate to the competitive, though charming couple Max and Annie. What keeps the movie from slogging into a boring action comedy is actually some great twists halfway into the movie. Though there are indeed some great laughs, too many jokes are crude, violent or contain foul language.

GAME NIGHT contains positive moral messages about fighting for your friends and family, even if you’re completely unequipped to do so. The movie also has a pro-marriage and pro-children theme. However, it’s marred by excessive foul language and one sequence with unnecessarily lewd sexual jokes. Extreme caution is advised.

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Best Movies for Family Movie Night

Need a great pick for your next family movie night ? Having trouble finding a movie you can all agree on? Our editors have hand-picked some of the best kids' and family movies available to rent or stream on Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, or your favorite streaming service, including beloved classics, action-packed adventures, laugh-out-loud comedies, and powerful dramas. No matter what your family is feeling, these films are perfect to watch together. Need even more inspiration? Be sure to check out our list of 50 Movies All Kids Should Watch Before They're 12 for our favorite time-tested titles we know your family will love. Or use our age-based filters to find the perfect pick, no matter your kid's age. So grab some popcorn, sit back, and enjoy!

The Adventures of Milo and Otis

Lovable pet tale about friendship despite differences.

A Bug's Life

Cute animated tale with some mild peril and scary bugs.

Finding Nemo

Sweet father-son tale has some very scary moments.

Wintry Disney musical is fabulous celebration of sisterhood.

The Little Mermaid

Superb, entertaining animated musical has some scary stuff.

My Little Pony: A New Generation

Sweet tale of acceptance has some mildly scary scenes.

My Neighbor Totoro

Beautifully animated fantasy about friendship fit for all.

Toy Story (1995)

Pixar classic is one of the best kids' movies of all time.

Beauty and the Beast

Disney fave has great music, strong messages, some scares.

Vibrant visuals, catchy songs, moving messages.

Creative, clever story about big feelings has peril, scares.

The Lego Movie

Hilarious toy tale plugs product but is nonstop fun.

The Lion King (1994)

Musical king-of-the-beasts blockbuster is powerful, scary.

Sweet fish-out-of-water story about friendship, adventure.

March of the Penguins

Stunning, loving documentary; some intense peril.

Mary Poppins

Classic family movie has positive messages.

Mary Poppins Returns

Blunt is a delight in sweet, nostalgic, toe-tapping sequel.

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My Fair Lady

Witty, stylish musical classic will entertain all ages.

Over the Moon

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Blame the Game’ on Netflix, A German Film That Is A Much Tamer Version of ‘Game Night’

Where to stream:.

• Blame the Game

11 Best New Movies on Netflix: July 2024’s Freshest Films to Watch

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From director Marco Petry and writers Claudius Pläging and Andrej Sorin comes Blame the Game , a Netflix Europe film about a newcomer joining a friend group’s weekly game night.

BLAME THE GAME : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Bike shop owner Jan (Dennis Mojen) and pet photographer Pia (Janina Uhse) quickly start dating after a meet-cute between their dogs in the park. Things are going well until Pia invites Jan to a game night with her friends, during which everything that could go wrong does. Her eclectic (and rich) friends aren’t the most welcoming and to make matters worse, her ex-fiance arrives and tries to sabotage their budding relationship every chance that he gets.

What Will It Remind You Of?: An obvious comparison is the great Game Night , though the Hollywood film goes off the rails (in a good way) in a much more extreme way than Blame the Game .

Performance Worth Watching: Stephan Luca is having tons of fun as Pia’s ex Matthias, playing up his arrogance and obsession perfectly.

Memorable Dialogue: “Everyone here won Monopoly in their life. And there are no bike shops in Monopoly,” Jan says to Pia, noting the obvious class differences between them.

Sex and Skin: There are some light hook-up scenes, but nothing too racy.

Our Take: What happens when you first start dating someone new and you’re invited to your first group hang? Hijinks ensue, of course. The premise of Blame the Game is simple and familiar but intriguing, and winds up ultimately being a love triangle story at its core.

When Jan arrives at the mansion where Pia’s weekly game night is held, he immediately feels out of place. Her friends don’t make him feel welcome, either—they comment on his lower class status, are openly snippy with him, and it doesn’t help that the gift he brought along backfires on him. When Pia’s ex arrives, things go from bad to worse. They battle for Pia’s attention, culminating in a naked game of ping pong where the loser has to drink a bottle of hot sauce. I won’t spoil who wins, but the rest of the movie involves drunk driving to the zoo and escaping from the tiger den.

My biggest note on this film: game night could’ve been weirder! The games that they play don’t escalate as expected, and the weirdest moment of the night comes when one of Pia’s disgruntled friends storms off and reemerges in cosplay costumes. The log line of the film promises an “unusual game night,” but really it’s just an “uncomfortable” one because of the presence of her ex.

But the film is extremely watchable, with fun performances and an upbeat script. There’s a side plot about a missing cockatoo that could’ve been cut, but we’ll let that slide. The dick-measuring contest between Jan and Matthias is entertaining enough to warrant a watch.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The German language film is a funny, laid back weekend watch.

Radhika Menon ( @menonrad ) is a TV-obsessed writer based in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared on Vulture, ELLE, Teen Vogue, and more. At any given moment, she can ruminate at length over Friday Night Lights, the University of Michigan, and the perfect slice of pizza. You may call her Rad.

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Make a plan to attend the Maine Lobster Festival, July 31 to Aug. 4

The annual event takes place in Rockland.

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A fresh batch of lobster at the food tent during the 2018 Maine Lobster Festival in Rockland. Ariana van den Akker/Staff Photographer

You’ll have a shell of a good time celebrating the state’s star crustacean during the annual Maine Lobster Festival, happening July 31 to Aug. 4 at Harbor Park in Rockland.

The festival’s five-day schedule features an arts and crafts show, parade and tasting event.

Other highlights of the Maine Lobster Festival include the International Great Crate Race, during which participants attempt to race across a string of lobster traps in Rockland Harbor. There’s also a seafood cooking contest, road race and plenty of kids’ activities.

Some of the musical acts performing over the five days are Paddy Mills, Rigometrics, Charlie and The Hustle and Julia Gagnon.

Don’t forget about the actual lobsters. You’ll have plenty of chances to eat your fill.

For the full schedule, head to mainelobsterfestival.com .

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