Game Night, or, Settlers of Catan

The best scene in Game Night has Annie (Rachel McAdams) trying to remove a bullet from her husband Max’s (Jason Bateman) arm, in the parking lot of a convenience store.

That one scene has everything that makes this movie work. It’s got the basic premise that runs throughout: normal people (relatively) put into the kind of situation that you only see in a movie. It’s got a tight, funny script that always seems to be exactly in sync with the audience, always playing what we know against what the characters know, so that the pacing never feels off.

And more important than any of that: it’s got the confidence of filmmakers who realize that they’ve absolutely nailed the casting, and they can devote several minutes of screen time just to enjoy watching its leads play off of each other.

McAdams and Bateman are both doing what they do best: she’s being intensely charming and relatable while clearly in a situation she’s not cut out for. He’s dead-panning through it so hard that it makes Michael Bluth seem over-emotional. And the characters and the actors are so perfectly matched that their chemistry is off the charts. Their back-and-forth feels like a couple who not only has been together for years, but who were perfectly matched from the instant they met. It’s near-impossible to tell how much of the scene was written and how much was improvised.

And on top of all that, it perfectly combines wry and wacky. She’s having to use all the medical equipment she could improvise from a convenience store, including giving him a hamburger-shaped dog toy to bite down on for the pain, while looking on her phone for instructions on how to remove a bullet from some kind of survivalist site that means having to ignore all the racist parts. So throughout, she’s having to operate the phone with her nose, there are cuts to a close-up of an open wound that’s bleeding copiously1While we hear the squeaking of the dog toy, which is just plain masterful, and while bantering, the two of them are trying to keep from throwing up, while trying to keep the other one from throwing up.

When Max feels a sudden jolt of intense pain, he spits out the chew toy, and it hits Annie on the head with a perfect squeak. And that was the biggest laugh-out-loud moment I had watching a movie that was packed full of them.

The second biggest laugh was when their friend Kevin (Lamorne Morris) sees someone thrown onto a glass table for the second time that night, and the table fails to shatter like it’s supposed to in an action movie, and he says, “Man, glass tables are acting weird tonight!”

It’s a perfectly-executed punchline, right at the end of a comedy action sequence, perfectly calling back to an earlier scene, perfectly summing up the tone and core idea of the movie, perfectly delivered. I just wish it had been the only one.

Because that’s the kind of self-aware gag that keeps popping up multiple times throughout the movie, and I know that I would’ve absolutely loved it if I’d seen it in 2018, but now only seven years later, it feels like the most dated aspect of the movie.2Somehow even more dated than the idea that a couple so obsessed with playing — or actually, winning — games to host a weekly game night for so many years would still be bringing Scrabble, Clue, and Life to a party.

The core idea of the whole thing is both that they’re characters who’ve been dropped into a somewhat cheesy action movie, and that they (and the audience) are never exactly sure how much of it is real vs how much was a planned part of the game. That’s reinforced with tons of tilt-shift establishing shots, to keep driving home the idea that it’s not real, or that we’re watching pieces being moved around on a game board.3That tilt-shift effect also unfortunately dates it, but it’s not so distracting because it works thematically, and the end credits cleverly call back to it.

But Game Night is in the weird position of having a cast and direction so good, and a premise that’s so clearly established, that every time it makes a self-aware comment about action movies, it feels distractingly forced. Like someone who’s telling a story so engaging that you’re completely on board, but they keep reminding you that they know the story is silly, and that they’re in on the joke.

It’s a minor criticism overall, in what’s an outstanding modern take on an old-fashioned screwball comedy, so I call it out only because it seems like exactly the kind of thing I’d love. Normally I love it when stories indulge in meta-commentary, especially when it’s done as well as it is in Game Night. So I was surprised by how distracting it was. No matter how well-executed, it was kind of a drag that it kept repeating the idea at all, instead of acknowledging it once and then going back to being a genuinely hilarious screwball comedy.

I’m wondering if part of why it was so distracting was because nothing else in the movie feels too try-hard. Just the opposite, in fact: having the confidence to let scenes play out for full effect, without being too worried that they need to be trimmed down. The perfect timing of a guy slowly sliding exactly seventeen dollars across a table, one bill at a time. Or every single scene with Jesse Plemons.

The three things I knew about this movie after hearing about it over the years: it took people by surprise by how funny it was, the scene with McAdams saying “Yes! Oh no he died!”, and the idea that Plemons “steals every scene he’s in.” The last one seems like a weird way to put it.

He’s really great, and he seems to get exactly what makes his character work in a way that’s still remarkable even when every single member of the cast seems to innately understand exactly what they’re doing. But it’s also a bit like if you opened the door to your house, gave someone explicit directions to your house, rolled out a carpet towards your living room, laid out tools and a dolly, and then said that they “stole” your television. The movie is entirely set up to help his scenes work: slow camera moves into his face, awkwardly long pauses, stretches of uncomfortable silence. It’s not insulting anybody’s performance to say that the movie works because it feels like a perfect collaboration where everyone at every step of the process gets how to make it work.

And the self-awareness and meta-commentary seem kind of unnecessary, since the emotional “weight” of the story is based on a sweet idea that actually works. It shows four couples in various stages of their relationships — or by the end, five couples — and it keeps casually throwing in hints of what makes people “right” for each other. Our two leads keep referencing their attempts to have a baby, and his anxiety over the prospect of having to settle down.4No, I’m not just struggling to make my blog post title work, actually. It’s a real thing that’s in the movie. That’s the kind of thing that usually feels like something writers begrudgingly put into a Hollywood movie to try and give it some dramatic weight. It can’t just be funny or exciting; it has to mean something.

But here, it works, without feeling too maudlin or too simple, because it’s so deftly handled. Our “main” couple are subtly contrasted against couples in various different stages of a relationship: a fertility doctor who’s single and looking, a friend and his co-worker who seem mis-matched in every possible way, two friends who’ve been together since middle school, and the creepy neighbor who can’t get over his divorce. It doesn’t draw too much attention to itself, but feels like it quietly hits all the romantic comedy beats, mostly in the background. It makes the story feel like a romantic comedy, even though we started the movie with a speed-run through the romantic comedy portion of our leads’ relationship, and joined them after they’ve already settled down. Essentially, it’s a celebration of settling down, a quiet rejection of the idea that relationships stop being interesting or romantic once you’ve found the person who’s perfect for you.

I didn’t make the connection until after the movie was over, but the directors of Game Night, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, were also co-directors of the excellent Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. (And co-writers of Spider-Man: Homecoming). It makes perfect sense; both are movies that seem like they’re way better than they needed to be, and both understand not just how to combine comedy and action, but how to trust in a cast to know exactly what they’re doing.

1
While we hear the squeaking of the dog toy, which is just plain masterful

2
Somehow even more dated than the idea that a couple so obsessed with playing — or actually, winning — games to host a weekly game night for so many years would still be bringing Scrabble, Clue, and Life to a party.

3
That tilt-shift effect also unfortunately dates it, but it’s not so distracting because it works thematically, and the end credits cleverly call back to it.

4
No, I’m not just struggling to make my blog post title work, actually. It’s a real thing that’s in the movie.

1 While we hear the squeaking of the dog toy, which is just plain masterful

2 Somehow even more dated than the idea that a couple so obsessed with playing — or actually, winning — games to host a weekly game night for so many years would still be bringing Scrabble, Clue, and Life to a party.

3 That tilt-shift effect also unfortunately dates it, but it’s not so distracting because it works thematically, and the end credits cleverly call back to it.

4 No, I’m not just struggling to make my blog post title work, actually. It’s a real thing that’s in the movie.