2161. Game Night (2018)

Starring: Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, Kyle Chandler

Director: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein

Running Time: 100 mins

Game Night is an American film about a group of friends who, on one of their regular game nights, find themselves caught up in a real-life crime mystery.

I had so much fun with this film. It’s a fast-paced, action-packed and fantastically funny comedy that’s full of brilliant laughs throughout, as well as an entertaining and equally unpredictable (albeit deliberately ridiculous) story to keep you entertained from start to finish. What’s more is that, with a whole host of hugely entertaining performances and a fun-loving atmosphere that’s there to make you laugh, you’ll be hard pressed not to have any fun with Game Night.

Above all, if there’s one thing that this film does really well, it’s the comedy. It doesn’t ever think of itself too highly, and doesn’t try to be too clever with its humour, but instead goes all out with a screenplay that’s filled to the brim with rapid-fire and easy-going jokes that are pretty much guaranteed to make you laugh.

At first, there’s the whole farce of the misunderstandings as a typical game night accidentally turns into a real crime, but after that, the film keeps up its fantastic sense of humour by combining hilarious slapstick with sharply-written jokes, as well as excellent running gags and a whole load of unexpected twists and turns that add to the fun of it all, making for a wall-to-wall laughter-fest that I had so much fun watching.

The story itself is completely over-the-top and out of control, with the characters getting dragged into progressively more and more insane situations as their night gets stranger and stranger, but in the context of the film’s fun-loving and deliberately silly atmosphere, it all works fantastically well, and is the perfect recipe for an hour and a half of non-stop fun and games.

When it comes to that story, however, I have to say that I was really impressed with the unpredictability that it managed to bring to the film. Although the plot is by no means the main focus of the movie, there’s real entertainment in watching the characters be confronted by all sorts of both bizarre and yet genuinely unpredictable, and as such actually exciting, twists and turns, to the extent that I was far more engrossed in the story than I ever expected to be at the beginning, offering up a similarly successful balance of humour and story as the likes of Horrible Bosses.

Finally, the performances here are hugely entertaining. Jason Bateman is as funny as ever in a fairly typical role, but with his expert comedic ability, he’s still a load of fun to watch. Alongside, Kyle Chandler is pretty good in a supporting role, and Rachel McAdams really impresses in what is easily her most energetic and fun-loving performance in a long time, taking centre stage in a lot of scenes and proving a properly hilarious lead in a way that we haven’t seen from her before.

Overall, I absolutely loved Game Night. Silly and ridiculous, but full of fast-paced and unpredictable twists and turns combined with a brilliant sense of humour from start to finish, I was laughing right the way through here, and that’s why I’m giving it an 8.0.