Sunday 25 March 2018

Game Over, Man! (2018)

Oh boy. There's a fun idea at the heart of Game Over, Man! but it's one that is constantly being buried under a mountain of atrociousness.

Adam Devine, Anders Holm, and Blake Anderson star as Alexxx, Darren, and Joel, three male workers in the housekeeping department of some big hotel building. They're terrible at their job, and not in an amusing way. They're just so bad that you have to wonder how they have stayed in employment for more than half a day. Always looking for the chance to sell one of their big (and terrible) ideas to someone, the boys get themselves very excited when they know that their building is about to host a party for an ultra-rich celeb named Bey (Utkarsh Ambudkar). Unfortunately, there's one man (Jamie Demetriou) trying to keep unwanted members of the public away from Bae. And there are a bunch of criminals (led by Neal McDonough) about to crash the party and extort money from Bae, which gives our hapless lead characters the chance to become heroes.

If you like jokes about sperm, more gratuitous penis shots than any other comedy, even more gratuitous cameos, and a very open-minded approach to a wide variety of sexual preferences that would feel admirably progressive if every main instance of it mattering wasn't being used as a plot device, or for an easy joke, then this is the film for you.

I like Devine, and I like his usual douchebag persona, so I enjoyed some of his work here. I can't say the same about Holm (who also wrote the terrible script) and Anderson. There are hardly any other performers that I DID enjoy, sadly, with the exceptions of Demetriou, McDonough, and Rhona Mitra, and I just enjoyed Mitra because I hadn't seen her in anything for a while. Chloe Bridges tries hard, but isn't given enough to do, and Daniel Stern is stuck with the kind of role that a decade or so ago would have gone to someone like Chris Elliott.

Director Kyle Newacheck does an acceptable job, I'll grudgingly admit, with a decent way of shooting the action moments and the gags. It's that script, always that script, that undermines everything, feeling very much like something written by a bunch of drunk friends on a big night out who decided that they would very much like to star in an action comedy, but with as many unfunny jokes crammed in there as possible. I am sure that some will find the content here tasteless, while just as many others will find it hilarious. I just think it was all a bit too juvenile and didn't work with the action movie template.

This is advertised as being from the people who brought you Workaholics. Well, all I can say is that I won't be rushing to check out Workaholics. I also can't believe we get something like this while we are still deprived of a film version of One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night. Netflix (because, yes, this is another one from them), start adapting Christopher Brookmyre works and you may regain some goodwill after recent mis-steps.

3/10

Not available on disc just now, feel free to shop here and get me rewarded for you clicking on a link.
American readers can click here.
I apologise that I don't have the time or links to cover every territory.


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