True to Hollywood’s mixed genre tendency, Game Night (2018) is an arrant comedy-adventure starring Jason Bateman and Rachel MacAdams. Although the action of the adventure is stronger than the zippy comedy, some of the jokes are quite amusing. Others, though, are desperate or boringly vulgar (stuff about penis size) or not as witty or intelligent as the filmmakers think, as when Bateman wants his unborn child to eventually learn Mandarin because “China is the future.” This last one, in fact, isn’t even funny.
Game Night is solidly, sometimes scintillatingly (Kyle Chandler, Jesse Plemons) acted. I consider it a bit too playful and cheeky for its own good, but it is a fun piece of harmlessness. And how can the directorial work miss? The flick has two of them—directors, that is.
