Game Night | Ultra-competitive couple Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams are up for a fright

Game Night Jason Bateman Rachel McAdams
(Image credit: Warner Bros)

Game Night Jason Bateman Rachel McAdams

This is not a game.

Whipping together laughs and thrills in ample measure, this immensely entertaining action comedy stars Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams as a married couple, Max and Annie, whose weekly game night with their ultra-competitive pals gets alarmingly out of hand after Max’s annoyingly cool older brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) becomes involved. Brooks hires a company to stage a mystery night complete with a bogus kidnapping, but it quickly becomes hard to tell what’s real and what’s fake.

Game Night benefits from a cunningly intricate plot, but as events spiral dangerously for the friends it’s the performances that make the film so much fun. Bateman and McAdams’ engaging leads receive enjoyable support from the likes of Billy Magnussen (enthusiastic dimwit) and Sharon Horgan (his unimpressed work colleague cum date). Best of all, though, is Jesse Plemons as Max and Annie’s embarrassingly awkward next-door neighbour, a lovelorn divorced cop whose desperation to join the players proves creepily hilarious.

Certificate 15. Runtime 100 mins. Director Jonathan Goldstein

Game Night available on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital from Warner Bros.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm2Ec5V-7OE

Jason Best

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.