Game Night

Copious doses of horse tranquilizers have the same impact as playing board games for me, yet this above-average comedy manages to use that premise to maximum advantage when a group of tight friends willingly participate in a mystery-game kidnapping thinking they are competing for a vintage car. Max (Jason Bateman) and his met-during-Trivial Pursuit wife Annie (Rachel McAdams) have been staging charades and Pictionary parties on a regular basis, when Max’s highly successful brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler from Cinemax’s Bloodlines), who’s in town on business, commandeers their night to take game playing to a “higher” level. Along the way the friends encounter an underground fight club and a stolen Fabergé egg, and suffer gunshots, blows to the head from fire extinguishers and being run over all in the competitive spirit of solving the puzzle. Co-starring Michael C. Hall (Dexter) and Jesse Plemons (FX’s Fargo).

[R]