BEFORE: Out with the old, in with the new. It's January 1, all the digit counters are re-set and we prepare for another year that we all hope will be better, in some way, though we know deep down, in many ways it will just be more of the same. But that's "stinking thinking" and I won't have it taint the new year. There will be plenty of bad movies willing to take care of that.
When I'm looking for a film to start off the new year, I have to start by looking at February. The romance chain for February is all figured out, so I'm looking to link to one of its two ends in something close to 30 or 31 steps. Unfortunately, it's almost as hard to link backwards as it is to link forwards, so there's a large document with all the cast lists of the films available to me, and it's color-coded, anyone whose name appears more than once is in light blue, all the other names are in black. And when I put two films next to each other and they share an actor, I turn that person's name from blue to red, so I can see the connection better. There's some trial and error involved, as each film probably has at least three or four blue names, representing the different paths I can choose.
Some films are unlinkables, though, and others are "one-linkables", meaning they currently connect to only one other film on the list. When I start with my February 1 film and develop a chain of about 30 films that then ends with a one-linkable, that chain could be the one. So I do want to hit a dead end, but it's all about hitting it at the right time. So when I reverse that, I know that if I start HERE, with "Game Night", I'll make it to Feb. 1 right on schedule. Then I can review those 30 or 31 films and ask myself, "Do these films seem important, are they the ones that I want to make a priority?" and if the answer is "Yes", I can proceed. Admittedly, it's an inexact science, but it's a process that keeps me going.
The romance chain extends into mid-March, and I've got some ideas for the next 10 or so films, but that's as far as I can go, because by then there will be new films on the list, and therefore different linking opportunities.
Before we dive in, it's time for my annual long-distance dedication to someone who's no longer with us - Carrie Fisher and Tom Petty were the recipients for the last two years. The obvious choice would be Stan Lee, who left this mortal plane in the closing weeks of 2018, and that's someone who created a large body of work with a wide variety of characters, a story-teller beloved for his craft who was very popular, and also someone I got to meet in person several times, because I've been to so many Marvel stockholder meetings and Comic-Cons. But then there's also Will Vinton, who died in October, and he also created a large body of work, just in clay animation instead of comics, and he was also a popular story-teller known as a giant in his field, and he's also someone I met several times, in fact I sort of worked for him for a number of years. I can't possibly choose, so they're going to have to share the honor. Well, I'm entering my second decade of doing this, and it's the start of Year 11, and what's an "11" but two ones, so for the first time I dedicate this Movie Year to two people.
THE PLOT: A group of friends who meet regularly for game nights find themselves entangled in a real-life mystery when one's shady brother is seemingly kidnapped by dangerous gangsters.
AFTER: The safest bet here was to assume that an innocent game night would soon spiral out of control, because who would want to go to the movies and watch as people play completely normal games of Pictionary, Charades and Taboo? That would be the worst movie ever. Plus, "things spiral out of control" is the exact plot of, like, the last 8 Jason Bateman movies, right? ("Office Christmas Party", "The Family Fang", "The Gift", "Bad Words", "Horrible Bosses", "Identity Thief" - yeah, I stand by that.)
It turns out I was right on the money, because on the first game night the lead couple (Max & Annie) hosts, the biggest challenge is to get all the guests into the house without alerting their neighbor, who they're trying to avoid. He's a policeman who use to be invited to game nights, but since his wife left him, the other gamers have decided they don't want to deal with his strange mannerisms and creepy vibe. But he still suspects the others are having game night without him, because he sees the snacks in their grocery bags, and anyway, Max's brother Brooks shows up and parks RIGHT outside, thereby blowing any efforts to conceal the night's activity. (Everything's kind of important here, because the neighbor's job, creepy vibe and even his dog become part of the story later on...)
The short-term solution to this problem seems simple - have game night at someone else's house. And that's what they do, since Brooks is in town for a while, and renting a McMansion across town.
When the guests (Max & Annie, plus two other couples) come over, Brooks - who's been overshadowing his little brother for years, with a better job, fast cars, and a personality that's always cutting Max down to size - has something besides board games planned, one of those interactive murder-mystery games that you hire an outside company to stage. (Is that really a thing? I'll have to remember to check...).
In an astounding coincidence that could only happen in the movies, the staged kidnapping is interrupted by what could be a real one, because as I saw in "Rough Night", the average Americans are just one knock on the door away from interacting with random jewel thieves or gangsters who are just roaming the streets of Miami, or in this case Atlanta. But thanks to bad timing and comic misunderstanding, the couples set off in their own directions, trying to solve Brooks' kidnapping, which they think is all part of a game. Ha ha, the average American can't tell the difference between a real gun and a fake one, or a real car chase and a staged one.
Once again, I feel like some screenwriters have created some reality here that bears little resemblance to the real world, so recently I've seen an office christmas party, a bachelorette party and now a murder-mystery party that don't follow regular rules, but are clearly just designed to spread the maximum amount of chaos over the movie screen. And really, aren't these three movies that are dipping into the same subject matter, with slightly different details in each one? Coming next year is "Easter Party", where a kids' egg hunt is interrupted by a bunch of jewel thieves who have hidden their diamonds inside plastic eggs, and they need to find them before the kids do, but they're foiled by Jason Bateman in a bunny suit. OK, probably not, but there are only so many types of parties left to make movies about. In other news, it looks like that movie called "Supercon", about a heist set at a comic convention got released last April, only I missed it. It got terrible reviews, but since I thought up the idea for a movie like that years ago (after carrying about $1500 in cash across the convention center to put down a deposit for the next year's booth), I'd probably give it a look.
Let's get to the NITPICK POINTS, though. I did like how the lead couple met, as captains of rival pub trivia teams. I lived in that world for a long time, since I spent 8 years on a trivia team, and I know those people are very competitive. A romance between two trivia "alphas" might play out sort of like it does here. But trivia is kind of its own animal, just because you're good at pub trivia, that doesn't necessarily mean you'll also be good at Jenga, or Dance Dance Revolution, or Pictionary, for that matter. Those all require different skill sets - I also played Dungeons & Dragons for a five-year stretch, and those players are a different type of nerd, too. If a D&D player moved into gaming, he'd probably play strategy games like Settlers of Catan. So someone skilled at trivia would probably prefer games like Trivial Pursuit (duh) over other fare. And murder-mysteries are their own thing, probably enjoyed most by fans of detective novels, not hardcore gamers. The payoffs are different, if you're a competive person just out to WIN, a murder mystery might not scratch that itch, because the goal there is to SOLVE and be correct. Think about the different goals in playing Monopoly and Clue, they require different strategies.
And of course, the coincidences and conveniences here represent a very far stretch, though I don't want to get too deep into them here. Reality is subjective, and it changes several times here as the true nature of the game is slowly revealed, and the players get deeper and deeper into the world of organized crime and underground fight clubs. I kind of want to watch this one again, just to find all the little Easter eggs - like the "tilt-shift" effect that's used in the aerial long-shots, which make the houses look like the famous Life board game. Then there are subtle references to Simon Says, Charades, Monopoly and even Operation peppered throughout the film. Something about the car chases seemed a little bit off, but now I realize that the camera often took the overhead POV shot of the couple's car, and the car seemed to remain static, with the rest of the world rotating around it when it swerved - that could easily be the POV shot from a video-game like "Grand Theft Auto 3".
And the movie itself nearly gets stolen by Jesse Plemons as the neighbor cop - who comes off as creepy because he speaks about things with no emotion. That's got to be difficult for an actor, to play someone who's depressed and speaks in a monotone, but to also give the impression that there's a lot going on inside, like one wrong move and this guy could spring into action, and you're just not sure what he's capable of. Remember what they always say after tragedies, how someone was a very quiet guy and kept to himself, and nobody could have predicted what that guy was going to do. THIS is that guy.
Starring Jason Bateman (last seen in "Office Christmas Party"), Rachel McAdams (last heard in "The Little Prince"), Kyle Chandler (last seen in "Manchester by the Sea"), Billy Magnussen (last seen in "Happy Tears"), Sharon Horgan, Lamorne Morris (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Kylie Bunbury (last seen in "The Sitter"), Jesse Plemons (last seen in "Hostiles"), Michael C. Hall (last seen in "David Bowie: The Last Five Years"), Danny Huston (last seen in "Wonder Woman"), Jeffrey Wright (last seen in "Shaft"), Chelsea Peretti (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Camille Chen, Zerrick Williams, Joshua Mikel (last seen in "Office Christmas Party"), R.F. Daley, Michael Cyril Creighton (last seen in "The Post"), Brooke Jaye Taylor, Natasha Hall, Malcolm Hughes, Jessica Lee, with cameos from directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein.
RATING: 5 out of 10 Jenga pieces
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