Game Night
A bunch of very funny people doing a bunch of very funny things
Directed By: John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein
Other Notable Films From Daley and Goldstein: Horrible Bosses (as writers), Spider-Man: Homecoming (as co-writers), Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (as directors)
Starring: Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, Lamorne Morris, Kylie Bunbury, Billy Magnussen, Sharon Horgan, Jesse Plemons, Kyle Chandler
Screenplay By: Mark Perez
Movie Synopsis: A group of friends gets pulled into an unexpected adventure when a normal-seeming game night goes awry.
Signature Line: “How can that be profitable for Frito-Lay?”
THE INTRODUCTION
An accounting of time, and people, and context
Every single person in the main cast of Game Night delivers multiple laughs.
Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams as Max and Annie, board game enthusiasts who fell for each other, in part, because of their joint competitiveness: fucking hilarious. Lamorne Morris and Kylie Bunbury as Kevin and Michelle, lifelong lovebirds who, save for a brief, recent break, have been together since they were 14: fucking hilarious. Billy Magnussen and Sharon Horgan as Ryan and Sarah, an oddball pairing, Ryan the lovable dumb-dumb and Sarah the whipsmart new addition to the group: fucking hilarious.
Even the movie’s two key supplemental players—Jesse Plemons as Gary, a socially inept police officer who wants nothing more than to be included, and Kyle Chandler as Brooks, Max’s more successful, more charming, more handsome older brother—are fucking hilarious.
And so it’s easy to look at Game Night, a movie chosen by Rolling Stone in 2022 as one of the 70 greatest comedies of the 21st century, and say something like, “Game Night is so good because Game Night is so funny.”
But that would only be partially true. Because there’s another element at play; an unexpected one. And it’s crucial not only to the initial appeal of Game Night, but also to its staying power: Game Night, in a surprising twist, is kind.
There’s violence in it, yes. And there are bits of spiky humor, obviously. And the pairs all compete mercilessly against each other, for sure. But the movie is never mean. The characters all clearly care about one another. Fundamentally, they want for each other to do well, and to be well.
That impulse animates the primary relationship of the film (Max and Annie, who are presented with myriad opportunities to cut each other down but never do), as well as the primary plot of the movie (after everybody realizes that the specter of real danger is present, it brings them even closer together rather than pushes them apart). It even drives the underlying tension of the film (Max feels insecure around his older brother, but eventually learns that his older brother feels the same way about him).
Kindness isn’t a thing you expect in an R-rated comedy.
And it’s certainly not something you expect in a movie that plays a guy getting sucked into the engine of a private jet for a laugh.
But that’s precisely why Game Night is so effective—and why it will continue to age into excellence.
THE VIEWING
A timestamped rewatch of Game Night
0:49: Jason Bateman is here. He plays Max, an overly competitive gamer with poor sperm motility. I really, really like Bateman as an actor. I think he’s capable of doing just about everything up on a screen. You want him to be funny? No sweat. (Arrested Development, Horrible Bosses, The Change-Up, etc.) You want him to be serious? Easy work. (The Kingdom, Air, etc.) You want him to be a smarmy jerk and also eventually totally vulnerable and broken? Done and done. (The Gift.) You want him to direct AND star in something? You got it. (Bad Words.) You want him to do all of those things at same time? Not a problem. (Ozark.) He’s awesome.
1:04: See this guy? That’s John Francis Daley, one of the directors of the movie. Most people will remember him as Sam Weir from Freaks and Geeks. For me, though, he’ll always be the new employee from Waiting…, a wildly underrated comedy about a group of employees at a Chili’s-style restaurant. (I was actually working as a waiter when I watched Waiting… for the first time. That shit was like Citizen Kane to me.)
1:30: Rachel McAdams is here. She plays Annie, an overly competitive gamer whose sperm are fine. She’s really great in this; I think it’s my fourth favorite performance of hers. Same as with Bateman, she can do it all, which is why her BEST PERFORMANCES podium is such a varied mix. (First place: Spotlight. Second place: The Notebook. Third place: Mean Girls.)
1:31: P.S. I’m aware that women do not have sperm. Thanks.
2:45: The movie opens with a montage of Max and Annie meeting, falling in love, getting married, and starting their lives together. Bateman and McAdams are wonderful as a couple. They give one of those performances where it’s like, “Man, I kinda wish these two were dating in real life.” It’s like the white version of when Lauryn Hill and D’Angelo did “Nothing Even Matters.”
3:06: Max and Annie are playing paper football. He comments that she has an advantage because her hands are smaller, meaning her field goal post is harder to flick the paper football through. Annie responds, “Well, I guess you should’ve married Uma Thurman.” It’s a joking reference to a movie Thurman did early in her career where she had comically large thumbs. There are dozens of movie references in Game Night. I’ll put together a list of them later.
3:07: P.S. The Uma Thurman thumb movie is called Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993). And if you’re thinking to yourself, “I mean, surely her thumbs couldn’t have been THAT big in it,” I promise you they were. They looked like baby legs.1
4:33: The thing that makes McAdams and Bateman such a great pairing is that, despite their outward differences, they’re philosophically aligned in terms of how to be funny. Neither one of them ever tries to sell you a joke; they just say a funny thing in a normal way and somehow it makes it so much funnier than if they’d have tried to be funny with it. It’s the kind of thing that only the most confident, talented actors can pull off. Speaking of which…
6:27: Jesse Plemons is here. He plays Gary, a divorced police officer and neighbor to Max and Annie. Nobody has ever played anything straighter than Jesse Plemons plays Gary. He’s like a charisma black hole. It’s amazing. He has the smallest part of the main cast but he usually ends up being the first person anyone mentions when they talk about this movie.
6:28: P.S. I don’t know that you’d ever be able to put together a completely unanimous THESE ARE THE TEN FUNNIEST LINES IN GAME NIGHT list because of how many A+ jokes are in it, but I do know that every single version of it is going to include the moment where Max, lying about a game night he and Annie are hosting, tells Gary that the reason he has three bags of Tostitos Scoops is because there was a three-for-one special at the store, to which Gary deadpans, “How can that be profitable for Frito-Lay?”
9:26: Billy Magnussen is here (with one of the many women he’s brought to game night on an ill-fated date). He plays Ryan, Max and Annie’s dumbest friend. Magnussen is such a fun actor. We’re gonna get my favorite line of Ryan’s pretty soon. I’m already excited for it.
9:38: Lamorne Morris and Kylie Bunbury are here. They play Kevin and Michelle, Max and Annie’s married friends who’ve been together since they were 14. I like these two as a couple a lot. They’re very warm, and very sweet.
13:19: Coach Eric Taylor is here. He plays Brooks, Max’s extremely charismatic older brother. If you put Coach Eric Taylor in a thing, that’s a thing I’m gonna watch. (Incidentally, if you put Coach Eric Taylor in a thing then kill him off in it immediately, then that’s a thing I’m gonna hate, which is why I hate Mayor of Kingstown.)
14:54: Okay, it’s time for my favorite Billy Magnussen line in the movie. What happens is: Brooks pauses his turn during Taboo to mention the urban myth that Marilyn Manson had a couple of his ribs removed so he could perform oral sex on himself. Brooks then segues into asking Max if he can tell a story about him from their childhood. When Max protests, the camera cuts to Ryan, who looks at Max like this…
…And then, through the giddiest, smiling-est face, says, “Did you blow yourself?” 😂😂😂 It’s a perfect line delivery.
14:55: You know what? Let’s actually watch him say it together:
