Fun-enough comedy that will mostly be remembered for Rachel McAdams’ best line delivery of 2018 (“oh no, he died”). Sibling rivalry deal, with Jason Bateman, who grew up extremely competitive because of his older brother Kyle Chandler. Kyle visits and sets up a live-action murder-mystery game as a pretense to gift Jason a sweet-ass car, but Kyle actually gets kidnapped by baddies because all his apparent success is due to his double-dealings with dangerous criminals, so Jason and wife Rachel split up from their fellow gamenighters to solve the real kidnapping which they think is fake until people start getting killed.

Calum Marsh’s review is what go me into the theater:

The screenplay, which has set-ups and punchlines and set-pieces and actual jokes, made me realize how bored I am with the Apatovian improvisatory riffing that’s dominated mainstream comedy since about 2005, and how much I’ve yearned for gags that seem written rather than stumbled upon once the camera’s rolling indiscriminately. It also looks terrific: unlike the slapdash script-delivery-service style that makes everything from Baywatch to The Disaster Artist feel like the same careless feature-length slab of cable television, Game Night is clearly the product of thought and skill, directed by people who remember (as some of us still do) that film is a visual medium.

Surprise – a comedy that I liked. Guess it’s not that much of a surprise, since it’s written by Nick Frost and Simon Pegg. The movie is one long chase, with them trying to help an alien return home. Biggest surprise is that the more action-packed second half is better than the first – the comedy doesn’t let up when the car chases and shootouts ramp up.

Agent Jason Bateman’s secret is that he’s Paul’s friend, was trying to get to him in order to help, which is why he’s a dick to agents Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio. The movie’s secret is that Sigourney Weaver plays the big boss, but she talks on the radio often enough that I figured it out from her voice. A defiantly anti-Christian movie, announcing its pro-evolution message early on (and repeatedly) then expanding that to a straight-up “god doesn’t exist” message. References most of Spielberg’s early movies. Maybe it’s because I watched on my little TV, but Paul may be the first CG creation that I accepted as a character instead of always thinking of it as an effect.