As far as high concepts go, Game Night is asks a lot from the audience to accept. As with a lot of comedies, the goal is for the jokes to outpace the story. Keep the audience laughing so much that they can't think about if any of the story makes sense. In that respect, Game Night does just enough to work, but not without stumbles.
The movie has a strong cast, and that's a great way to start. It centers around three couples, Rachel McAdams & Jason Bateman, Lamorne Morris & Kylie Bunbury, and Billy Magnussen & Sharon Horgan. There's also Jesse Plemons playing a creepy neighbor and Kyle Chandler as Bateman's over-achieving brother. All the people you would expect to be funny are. Bateman can play this kind of straight man role in his sleep and still be funny (Note: his isn't sleepwalking through this role). Morris uses a lot of his moves from New Girl, except with the crazy dialed down a bit. Horgan is one of the greats at getting a laugh out of an eye roll or general belittlement. However, the people who impressed me the most were those I don't normally associate with comedies. McAdams is the romance-end of most of the romantic comedies she's been in. It hasn't been since Mean Girls that she's been asked to actually generate the laughs like this. She has good comedic timing and gets laughs from a few lines that don't otherwise deserve them. I'm so used to Kyle Chandler as a stoic presence in Friday Night Lights and Bloodline that it is bizarre seeing him so loose and frantic. Jesse Plemons most effectively uses what he's already known for as an actor to great effect. He's always kind of awkward and has an unscrutible face. He could be listening intently or completely spaced out and you'd never know which. He dials all that up and milks every second he can out of it. With a weaker cast, I don't see how this movie could've worked.
The directors of Game Night also wrote both of the Horrible Bosses movies, which is a good bar to set. Like those movies, I like the idea of different jokes and plot points more than the actual execution. I think it sounds funny to have someone holding a gun that they think is fake. I don't think I've ever laughed at a scene of someone waving the gun around in exaggerated fashion and sticking the gun in his or her mouth playfully. It's a joke that always sounds funnier described than seeing it acted out*. The movie is filled with things like that. The funniest parts for me were small jokes on the side, like a recurring gag about glass tables not breaking. There aren't enough of these to make up for a lack of big set pieces though. Ideally, this antics in the movie will rise with the plot. As the story expands, so do the jokes. Instead, it settles for being a half-assed action movie by the end. And I should be clear. They didn't try and fail to make it an action movie by the end. They made a half-assed action movie by design, which is fine and potentially quite funny. There just weren't enough laughs to sustain it.
*That said, this film features a scene like that with Rachel McAdams doing this while dancing along to Third Eye Blind which is more delightful than I can possibly explain.
One of the most common lazy commentaries I'll hear someone make about a movie is saying "I bet that was every good joke" after seeing a trailer. That's up there with "the book was so much better" among the most useless bits of criticism one can come up with. What the person is really saying is, "I bet none of the jokes in the movie need any context". You see, trailers use the funny parts of a movie that don't have to be explained: the jokes that could essentially be plugged into any movie and still be funny. They don't have time to set things up in 30, 60, or 120 seconds. Great comedies don't have to worry about the best jokes being spoiled in a trailer, because even more of the jokes are based on knowing the characters or are built on prior events in the movie that can't be covers so quickly. Mediocre comedies are more filled with those simple jokes that can be easily spoiled by an overzealous trailer. Well, that happens with Game Night. I laughed the hardest at the trailer. By the time I saw the movie, I knew most of what turned out to be my favorite jokes. With context the jokes didn't get any funnier and there weren't enough new jokes to make up for the ones lost to the trailer. I suppose I could be angry at the trailer for this, but I'd rather look to a thin script in need of another punch-up draft or two.
It's a shame. Game Night fell just below the threshold for me to really love it. Had the jokes landed even 10% harder, I could've thoroughly enjoyed it. Laughs have a compounding effect. It's easier to make someone keep laughing than to start laughing. Comedy benefits a great deal from momentum. For me, Game Night never had enough momentum with the jokes. I found myself not laughing just enough to really think about the convoluted story and the whole movie collapsed under the weight of that scrutiny. I have a feeling that if the jokes hit you even a little harder than they hit me, you'll have a great time.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
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