Game Night (2018)

Film: Game Night (2018)
Stars: Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, Kyle Chandler, Billy Magnussen, Sharon Horgan, Lamorne Morris, Kylie Bunbury, Jesse Plemons, Michael C. Hill
Director: John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

As someone who will probably have "movie buff" written at least twice into their eventual eulogy, I get asked a lot of questions about my movie-watching habits.  One of the bigger ones is "who are actors you don't like?"  This is a frustrating question because I don't like to think negative things when it comes to the movies, and also because, as a general rule, most famous actors have made at least one or two movies or TV shows that were worthy of our time.  This is occasionally untrue, but even actors that I genuinely don't think are talented can make the stars align (looking at you, Lon Chaney Jr).  However, there are a few actors I tend to have "allergies" to, where I for some reason continually find myself watching one of their movies for other factors, but never really care for them, and among modern actors, few people make that list more than Jason Bateman & Rachel McAdams.  McAdams can act (she's great in Mean Girls and Disobedience, and I had a lot of fun in Red Eye), but usually she's playing really boring characters and under-emoting.  Bateman is always playing pretty much the same brash, annoying character, and even when he's in a good project (This is Where I Leave You comes to mind), he's hardly adding anything to the work.  All of this is to say that when Game Night started to be advertised, I quickly wrote it off so that I wouldn't have an "allergic reaction."

(Spoilers Ahead) But the movie's reviews were just terrific, and as a result I felt that I couldn't put 2018 to rest (we'll be doing that over the next couple of weeks as the Oscars draw to a close with reviews of pretty much every seen 2018 film I haven't already profiled, though we'll of course revisit once I'm ready to tackle the OVP from that year) without viewing the picture.  The story centers on a trio of couples who get together for a couples' game night, at which the very competitive Max (Bateman) and Annie (McAdams) reign as champions.  This specific game night, Max's handsome, more successful older brother Brooks (Chandler) is planning the game, and essentially what is happening is that he's putting together a fake kidnapping of himself, and the three couples will have to follow the clues to solve the crime.  Brooks is then kidnapped by actual kidnappers (or so we're lead to believe), with the three couples thinking that they're solving a harmless game, causing mass chaos to ensue.

The movie is genuinely funny in the first half, with the couples all having solid chemistry, including Bateman & McAdams, though true to form I felt they were upstaged by Plemons in particular as the strange, single cop neighbor Gary.  I never entirely get why mystery comedies aren't more prevalent because they are very successful cinematically, as when they're trying to discover who kidnapped Brooks, and where he might be heading it's really fun, kind of like a raunchier game of Clue.  When the film enters its second twist, though, where it turns out that at least part of the evening has been orchestrated by Gary as revenge for the couples not inviting him to game night, the movie becomes a bit dull & overly-orchestrated.  Twists are fun in mysteries (and one of the main reasons to go), but the film's entire subplot about Annie & Max trying to conceive becomes the way to tie things together rather than just celebrating the silliness, and it's a lifeless ending.  However, up until that point I was fully-invested and think it's still going to be a good movie to catch on TBS in the future.

The movie doesn't entirely cure my allergy for McAdams, though it's getting closer.  Combined with Disobedience, she's had the best year (creatively) of her career since 2004, and I'm hopeful that this combination of critical and commercial success gets her into a new alley as an actress; weirdly the other actress I cite as having an aversion to despite her current success (Blake Lively) also gave the best performance of her career in 2018.  Bateman, though, while fun here is never more than that, and it's hard to understand why he keeps getting roles like this when another actor would have been considerably more effective in the lead.  But my hat is off to his agent, because once again while I swore "I'm never seeing another Jason Bateman movie" I continued to do so in 2018.