It stars Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams as a competitive couple obsessed with games. They have game nights with their circle of friends, carefully excluding their next door neighbor, Jesse Plemons. He's a creepy cop whose ex-wife was part of game night, but now he's single.
Bateman has a more successful (better looking, smarter...) brother, Kyle Chandler, who is always getting his goat. He invites everyone over to his fancy modern house for a special game night - one of those real-life murder mysteries, where someone will be kidnapped. When they "kidnappers" show up, they are pretty realistic, and Chandler's "acting" as he struggles to get away is a bit too good.
You guessed it - he is really being kidnapped. And our friends have to put their game skills together to get him out. Except half the time they don't know what's real and what isn't.
We found this to be a fun modern comedy - I complain a lot about slack writing, pointless improv, and random characterization (looking at you, Will Ferrell). This is pretty tight, with a couple of good twists and a solid ending. Plemons does a bit of that comedy of awkwardness thing where he just holds a fixed expression until it gets uncomfortable, but there's more to his role.
The friends were also fun: a black couple, Lamorne Morris and Kylie Bunbury, who were a couple since grade school and are very much in love, unless... Also, Billy Magnussen as the dumb one, who also brings bimbos to game night, and Sharon Horgan, the intelligent Irish woman he brings on this occasion because he's tired of losing. Even though he isn't attracted to her, for which she thanks god.
Not the funniest thing we've ever seen, mind you, but it satisfied.
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