Summary
Based on a true story of a group of friends that have been playing the same game of tag for almost thirty years.
My Thoughts
Tag! You’re it! It’s a game we’ve all played before; even the word brings back memories of running under monkey bars, through swing sets, up slides, and through crowds of annoyed classmates. We’ve all played it, but none of us nearly as hard or with as much discipline as the men that this story was based on. That’s right, this is based on a true story of ten friends from elementary school who continued playing tag one month out of every year. They travel across the country, wear disguises, sneak into each other’s places of business, all in the name of fun and friendship. It’s a cool story, one that brings a smile to my face and light to the depths of my black and shriveled heart, so it’s no surprise that Hollywood took this concept and turned it into a run-of-the-mill, completely forgettable raunchy comedy. Sigh… not every comedy this year can be as good as “Game Night”.
(SOME SPOILERS IN THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH)
The film opens with Bob Callahan (Jon Hamm, “Bad Times at the El Royale”), a CEO of some big company, being interviewed by a reporter from the Wall Street Journal (Annabelle Wallis, “The Mummy”). During their interview, Hoagie (Ed Helms, “Chappaquiddick”) interrupts and tags Bob, and the reporter, amused by what she sees, asks what’s going on. Bob explains that every year during one month their group of friends plays tag, the adult version- meaning they travel all over the country and go to extreme lengths to tag each other. Hoagie explains that Jerry (Jeremy Renner, “Captain America: Civil War”), one of their friends, is quitting the game after this season. Jerry has never been tagged before, so it’s crucial that they get him this year. Bob agrees that this is a critical situation, so they go around and round up more of their friends, Kevin (Hannibal Buress, “Spider-Man: Homecoming”) and “Chilli” (Jake Johnson, “Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse”), and they make their way across the country to crash Jerry’s wedding and hopefully tag him.
(SPOILERS END)
This film intrigued me solely because of its premise: a true story about a bunch of forty year olds playing tag? That’s great! The problem with this story is that everything nowadays has to be way over the top in order for it to be considered funny by modern audiences, and pretty quickly it becomes apparent that most of this stuff did not happen the way they portray it. I find it hard to believe that anyone rigged traps that could’ve killed their friends in order to avoid being “it.”
Don’t get me wrong; there were some funny moments in this movie. Pretty much any time Hannibal Buress said something I laughed- he’s easily the best character in this movie. The first time we see inside Renner's mind and he does a “Sherlock Holmes”-esque breakdown of what he's seeing was funny, but by the third or fourth time it was getting old. There were some good bits of physical humor with Ed Helms, too, but for the most part I honestly wasn’t that impressed. A lot of the “jokes” were people falling down or getting hurt; at least it wasn’t as bad as “Action Point”, but still, comedies today seem to be lacking creativity. Jake Johnson was the least funny character in this movie. His character was a stoner, and that’s what all of his jokes were about… Saying “Oh boy, Chilli is high again,” isn’t funny, but the writers certainly seemed to think it was.
The best part of this movie is actually during the credits, where we see documentary-style cellphone footage of the guys actually playing tag. I actually laughed out loud a lot during those scenes. It made me wish that they’d done this movie with a little more subtlety. A forty year old sneaking around and trying to tag his buddy while they’re in the shower or on a golf course or at lunch somewhere is funny enough. Why they felt the need to go so over the top that people are jumping out of windows and doing parkour like James Bond in “Casino Royale” is beyond me…
Verdict
I really don’t have too much to say about this movie, mostly because it was totally forgettable. I saw it last night and already 50% of the movie has evaporated from my brain. By next week, I’ll probably look back at this review and say, “I saw that? Oh, yeah…” The film is utterly harmless, and it has a few hearty laughs, but it’s never going to be considered a classic. Heck, I’ll be surprised if anyone mentions this movie next year. See it if you want, but don’t pay to see this in theaters. Wait until you can stream it somewhere… and maybe have a beer beforehand.
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