《遊戲之夜》[Film Review] Game Night (2018) 5.9/10

A reveal-after-reveal black comedy grinds out the perennial problems of a man’s sibling pressure and a woman's natalism instinct to actuate an unexpected game night which goes very much awry for the game-loving couple Max (Bateman) and Annie (McAdams), and their equally game friends.

Director duoDaley and Goldstein sustains a care-free, jaunty pace from the word go and never subverts the good vibes with menace from a criminal underworld, summoning three heterosexual couples to solve a blundering kidnap mystery game of Max’s brother Brooks (Chandler), ostensibly spurred by material gain, the plot is pretty derivative and seems to been left on the shelf at least for more than a decade, before being dusted off with a few more twists to spice it up, a frivolously and persistently needling spat between the African-American couple Kevin and Michelle (Morris and Bunbury), is for him to find out who is the celebrity she slept with 10 years ago during their cooling-off period, and the answer is none other than Denzel Washington, albeit a fake one, who is 54 years old in 2008 while Bunbury is barely 19, egregious daddy issue is too passé for 2018, guys!

A third pair is a harebrained jock Ryan (Magnussen) and his new date Sarah (British comedienne Horgan), an elder but much more sharp-witted companion compared to his usual one-off bimbos, a slavish opposite attraction byplay but sparks don’t fly high. Although it is nice to see Bateman, Hall and Chandler, three TV leading man congregated together to engage some generic action and harmless laughter, the real scene-stealer here is Jesse Plemons, aka. thepoor man’s Matt Damon (although I will bet anyone that he will notch up an Oscar for acting sooner than his more prestigious doppelgänger), as the creepy neighbor Gary, straddling mischievously between the elaborated master-mind and the valiant policeman, and irrefutably, the least obnoxious character among the posse.

And that’s it, GAME NIGHT is a fun choice for a movie night, preferably with friends, not too ambitious but there is enough spontaneous laughter to cherish, in tandem with a mild distaste of its cavalier attitude of mollycoddling the lowest common denominator.

companion piece:Joel Edgerton’s THE GIFT (2015, 6.6/10).