"I Don't Care, I Love It": Game Night
This is the third in our "I Don't Care, I Love It" series, where we talk about certain movies that didn't make the bracket. Today's entry is Game Night (2018).
I want to start this post with a disclaimer. Let me be clear: I'm not here to say that Game Night was a bad movie or even that it was underrated. After all, it has an 85% on Rotten Tomatoes (77% audience score) and a 6.9/10 on iMDb. The movie was received well. Financially, it made $120 million on a $37 million budget. It did well there too. I'm writing this article because it stars two people that, among my friends at least, I am pretty well known for not enjoying.
Game Night stars Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams. I've always been iffy on Bateman going back to the Arrested Development days. I feel as if he plays the same role no matter whether the project is a comedy or not, and while he tends to work better in comedies in my opinion, there's still something mocking and condescending about a lot of his characters that I truly just don't enjoy. Along those lines, I can get into the reasons why I don't like Ozark, but I think we would lose the little readership we have here. Oddly enough, I think my favorite role of his was in Dodgeball, where he had a great bit part as an obnoxious ESPN Ocho commentator (alongside an actor I do love, Gary Cole). I also really liked him in The Gift, but his role as a condescending straight man was perfect for the plot. So yeah, I'm not the biggest Bateman fan.
As for McAdams, I admittedly haven't seen her in all that much now that I look at her filmography, but of the things I've seen her in, she ranges from boring (Wedding Crashers) to atrocious (season 2 of True Detective, but I guess that's not fair to her). I'm obviously setting aside Mean Girls, because, yeah. Even I can't make an argument against Regina freaking George. But other than that....eh. Does anyone remember her in Doctor Strange? The Sherlock Holmes movies maybe? Even Spotlight, which was a great movie, all I think of are Ruffalo and Keaton. I'm not saying she's bad, she just doesn't do it for me.
Anyway, Game Night is awesome, and both of them are great in it. Basically, a group of friends get together for a game night at Bateman's rich older brother's (Kyle Chandler) house. Chandler's character says he's set up an interactive role-playing game and whoever wins will get his brand new Corvette as the prize. All of a sudden, an FBI agent (Jeffrey Wright) breaks into the house and explains the rules of the game, but before he finishes, he's assaulted by a bunch of masked men, who also assault Chandler. Thinking it's all part of the game, Bateman, McAdams, and their friends continue to eat hors d'oeuvres and joke around.
For the next 90 minutes or so, the co-writers of Horrible Bosses and Spider-Man: Homecoming bring the viewer on a winding, twisting dark comedy including an absolutely iconic performance by their awkward divorcee police officer neighbor Jesse Plemons and his adorable dog Bastian. (Fun fact: that dog, named Olivia, was also in Widows the same year, and got her own trailer on the set for that movie. She lives happily ever after in both movies, so watch them both.).
Game Night contains more than enough twists to keep the viewer wondering whether there was a really a game going on at all, and I won't spoil any of them, but I will say that there's a scene where McAdams has to remove a bullet from Bateman's arm while he's biting down on a squeaky chew toy, and when I first saw it, I couldn't stop laughing. Anyway, there's a whole lot of stuff going on in this movie and it's a wild ride from start to finish. There's a fake Denzel Washington, a Fabergé egg subplot, and there's....everything Jesse Plemons does.
So yes, even though I don't generally love Bateman or McAdams, I really enjoyed this movie and the two of them put in great and memorable performances. If you haven't seen this movie yet, go do it. I just watched it again this past week. It's great.