Tag: Kylie Bunbury

Game Night

The first trailer I saw for Game Night, I sort of knew I was hooked.

If anything, I would love to watch a movie about people who like to just play games. Board games and party games. I knew they wouldn’t get into the nitty gritty of great games, but any positive spin on board games is good in my book.

And yeah, sure, comedy and death. The other two things that go great with a nice game night amongst couples and friends.

Policeman
And puppies. All gamers love puppies.

Max (Jason Bateman) met Annie (Rachel McAdams) on a trivia night at a bar. They were both captains of different teams, kicking ass, and knowing the same questions. It was love at first sight.

Over the years their competitive nature took them many places. Mostly to their living room, hanging out with friends and loved ones, playing games of skill and chance, and eventually getting married! But if there is one game they are not succeeding at, it is the whole pregnancy thing. Max cannot perform on that level.

And the doctors think it could be performance anxiety. It turns out that Max has a more successful older brother (Kyle Chandler). I mean, he looks better, he is richer, he wins all of the games against his brother, and just his life is so fucking awesome. And when the brother shows up, he wants to beat him at hosting duties as well.

He throws his own game night, with alcohol, and a game where people will come and abduct one of the guests! They have to follow the clues to find the kidnapped victim first, and the winning pair will win a goddamn car. Yeah, his game night is way cooler. Unfortunately, the brother was into some hardcore bad stuff. And the kidnappers this night are real, just the rest of the party won’t realize it until things are too deep.

Also starring Chelsea Peretti, Danny Huston, Michael C. Hall, Lamorne Morris, Kylie Bunbury, Jesse Plemens, Sharon Horgan, and Billy Magnussen.

Gun
“I throw my hands and guns in the air, like wayooooo!”

Bateman and McAdams play a delightful couple, who really care about each other and generally want each other to succeed. They aren’t perfect and they have disagreements, especially in the family department, but they work through it, they communicate, and they have a good time in the face of adversary.

In many ways, their coupling in this film is one of the best couples I have seen lately, outside of TV. TV usually has a lot more happy couples. Movie couples tend to have divorces. And that is a lot of words on just how great of a couple they are.

The film ended up disappointing me on the levels of shenanigans that were promised by the trailer. Honestly, everyone found out the truth of the situation way too early. If they could have had the characters think it was a game and really realistic for longer periods, there could have have been some much longer and happier jokers. But the jokes were too few and far in between.

Sure the overall movie is still amusing, or even cute. There are intense scenarios, surprise cameos, and twists you might not see coming. But these twists are more done for twist reasons, and don’t really end up making a lot of sense.

Game Night if anything has a lot of heart and can be a good time for those who watch it. It just doesn’t have any sort of repeatability factor and cannot live up to its plot potential.

2 out of 4.

The Sitter

Here is something I won’t do with The Sitter. I won’t complain about it being similar to Adventures In Babysitting. That seems to be a big complaint. After all, there cannot be more than two movies about babysitting in a 20some year span. That would be crazy. Just like there is only one cop show every 20 years.

Can’t even compare their directors, as The Sitter was directed by the guy who did Pineapple Express, so he is already established. The guy who directed Adventures In Babysitting was doing his first movie ever, and only went on to direct some Harry Potters, Home Alone, Rent, and Percy Jackson. Holy shit, that guy is awesome.

Chris Columbus
I guess it makes sense that his name is Chris Columbus too, given his ground breaking movies.

Jonah Hill is a bum. Well, kind of. He lives with his mom, after kind of taking a break from college, and has no job or anything going on. He’d rather sit around all day than do anything productive. Or you know, hang out with his “girlfriend”, Ari Graynor, who lets him go down on her! And that is about all they do. Shit.

But when his mom’s future love life is in jeopardy because her friends can’t find a sitter, he reluctantly volunteers. Afterall, he just has to sit in the house and get paid. Just three kids too. The oldest, Slater (Max Records), seems to be bad socially, the daughter, Blithe (Landry Bender), who is going through some wanna be celebrity party phase, and their adopted son, Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez), who sets off firecrackers and has a bad attitude.

But his girlfriend calls up, asking him to come out and party, and bring her some cocaine (for her friend, not her), and then they can have real sex! Well, time to grab the kids and go! Anything dealing with drugs is probably bad, so when he tries to get the stuff from her friend Karl (Sam Rockwell, who yes, dances in this movie) things go from bad to worse.

Race relations, people with guns, diamond stealing, bathrooms exploding, Bat Mitzvah crashing, and you know, meeting old friends in the form of an old college buddy who just wants to hang out and watch a cool geologic storm with him (hint, true love, played by Kylie Bunbury).

fat JH
This is also the last movie to feature “Fat Jonah Hill”.

There is a rumor that formerly fat people can’t be funny. That isn’t true, we found that out with 21 Jump Street. But it should be noted that fat people aren’t always funny. This movie being a big example of it.

Was there some funny moments? Sure, but they were few and far between. It was also entirely predictable, and well, just lame. Sequences of the movie didn’t even make sense, one notable part involving a pull over from the police. They didn’t even try to explain that event later in the movie, was just stupid.

Most of the humor derives around Jonah Hill cursing at or around kids, and them possibly doing it back. Hell, even Sam Rockwell’s character wasn’t that funny. I think the best character was the gay roller blading assistant. Name is maybe Julio. Maybe.

1 out of 4.