Game Night is an entertaining comedic thriller

Nonstop hilarious acting mixes well with action packed directing

It has been a while since there has been a truly laugh out loud comedy in the theatres and the recently released “Game Night” wins nearly every laugh.

Millions of couples look forward every week for the night they can sit back with close friends, toss back a couple drinks and play some board games. However, what if one night a couple finds themselves in a deadly game of survival instead of a friendly game of charades. Well, in this case, the results are hilarious.

“Game Night” is directed by the duo John Francis Daley and Johnathon M. Goldstein. Both are fairly new to directing, nevertheless, the two’s direction is very stylistic and the camera work brings even more excitement to the movie.

The film is written by the same team behind the “Horrible Boss” films, movies that in my opinion are very underrated. “Game Night” is a mystery thriller at heart and in many ways an homage to the 1997 Michael Douglas thriller entitled “The Game”. However, with a plot of a thriller, “Game Night” chooses to be a dark slapstick comedy that only makes its absurd over the top plot even funnier.

The film consists of married couple Annie (Rachel McAdams) and Max (Jason Bateman) who bond over there competitive nature and love over board games, trivia, etc. During their Weekly Saturday game night with their three closest friends Max’s brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) crashes the party.

Brooks is an insanely wealthy and successful broker which has always made Max feel jealous and insecure. Brooks and Max reunite after not seeing each other for over a year. After Brooks invites the entire game night party to his house for his own unique game night.

When the Guests arrive at Brooks’ mansion Brooks states that the game they are playing is an interactive role-playing mystery game. To make it more interesting Brooks promises that the winning couple of the game will receive his newly purchased Stingray, the car not the animal.

An actor from the role-playing game company, dressed as an FBI agent, enters the house and introduces the game, while out of nowhere two masked criminals also enter the house knock out the FBI actor and kidnaps Brooks. The game night party split up to solve the mystery and also to find Brooks, except there is just one thing they all think that everything is still part of the game and therefore isn’t real.

To put it simply, this movie is way funnier than I thought it would be. I rarely laugh out loud during movies, but during “Game Night” I was nearly laughing the whole time. The reason the movie works is because of the characters. Each character has their own unique personality and the certain things they do are so funny because the audience feels as if they actually know them.

The actors all did a great job and it even appeared as if the actors were having blast while filming their scenes. Jason Bateman plays his usually witty self but is far more likable in this film than he is in many of his other films. Rachel McAdams is one of the standouts in the movie. McAdams proves that she is truly an amazing comedic actress. Her and Jason Bateman had great chemistry and I would love to see them in more movies together.

The true standout of the film though has to be Jason Plemons who plays Max and Annie’s extremely creepy neighbor Gary. The entire audience laughed every single time Plemons was on screen.

“Game Night” doesn’t just work as a comedy, it is always an extremely entertaining thriller. The movie has a slow start, but once it starts going it never lets up. The camera work is also very well done. The directors use many practical effects as well as camera tricks that give the audience a rush of excitement.

Overall, “Game Night” is one of the funniest movies in the last couple years. The comedic acting is top notch and the script is filled with jokes that almost always hit. I had a blast watching “Game Night” and I can’t wait to see it again.