Blame the Game

Magandang pelikula!

Being from Belgium, I've watched my share of European movies. This comedy, like many others from the continent, is an acquired taste. Silly and absurd, yet built around a somewhat believable culture clash between city hipsters and gated community yuppies, the film has little action but a lot of cliché-ridden talking. The dialogue will probably get on some people's nerves, but even though the characters are literally a caricature of their own archetype, the babble is quite recognizable and does have a natural flow to it. The actors are actually doing a rather good job, but they have a sort of theatre vibe more than the usual movie appeal. It may not be my favorite European comedy, or not even my favourite German comedy, but I don't regret watching it on this lazy day. Heck, towards the end I was even cheering for the 'good guy'!

On netflix usa, it's blame the game .. in german, "spieleabend"... which roughly translates to game night! A german film, dubbed into english for the united states market. After a chance meeting, jan and pia really hit it off, and have a thing going. Now, jan is meeting pia's friends at game night. But when jan let's a pet bird escape, it starts a chain of events where things just go from bad to worse. Of course, if he had just the truth about letting it out, everything might have gone better. But people never tell the truth in films. And now, pia's friends are ganging up on poor jan. I would have just left. Jan is such a nice guy, he doesn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. The film is okay. It's a lot of silly events that we have to buy into. The acting is fine. It's just painful to watch a group gang up on someone like that. And some of the voices in the dubbing are just way over the top. It all ends just fine, but we have to go through a lot of painful events to get there. Directed by marco petry.

The best part about this movie was Till Schweiger not being in it. Sadly, besides this it was like all Mr. Schweigers comedic flicks of yesteryear. The promised "Spieleabend" was nothing but a bad excuse to throw a bunch of highly dislikable characters in a room: a bunch of rich, arrogant, completely unlikable, intellectual dudes vulnerable female main character her new partner, who consequently had to be a school dropout and naturally didn't like games at all her rich dentist ex, who still wanted to have her back and constantly provoked the seemingly dumb new dude add one fantasy roleplay nerd who after some provocation put on his elvish LARP-gear while sitting in front of his laptop playing a mmo (I wished i made this up...) Oh, and since German flick: Of course the two rivals had to do a ping-pong shootout completely naked for no appearent reason. When eventually this travesty ended in an unnecessary Hangover move with the dudes climbing into the tiger enclosure of the local zoo, at least I hoped some of them would get killed. Sadly I got disappointed once more.

Like many others, I got scammed by Netflix saying this movie is top 10 in tens of countries. So I watched it, expecting original or good comedy. It was dull and bland as hell. I felt like I've seen this movie a hundred times. There's absolutely nothing original in the script. The movie also tries many kinds of humour (slapstick, gross...etc) but nothing really lands. The movie is also frustrating because the characters don't behave like normal human beings. It takes you out of the movie. If this is the best Netflix can offer, I'm seriously concerned about the exigence of people nowadays. Please don't encourage this.

Old jokes and bad acting combined with annoying characters which make it extremely hard to watch it to the end. Completely waste of time. Can't think of how someone would come to the idea to write a script and make a movie out of such an idea! The only character someone maybe identify can is Jan, the rest of the characters are either boring, unrealistic or just plain unpleasant to watch. Everything you see in this movie has been shown in much better ways a thousand times before in other movies! Worst scene ist two men playing naked table tennis while annoying woman making stupid jokes all the time.....

I've been reading the mostly negative reviews from my fellow reviewers on this movie and I'm going to go out on a limb here and disagree. It's a lighthearted romcom that does its job. Boy dog meets girl dog, boy meets girl, they go to rich girl's game night with her rich annoying friends and mayhem ensues. There's nudity, loving the new focus on male bodies by the way, makes a change from the endless undressed females, there's sport, bromance, physical danger, birds and an endless skewering of the modern diseases of social media, texting, disconnection and loneliness. Then throw in breast milk, tigers and a bit of neurodivergence and you have the delight of this film. I thought it was hilarious.

TV slash occasional movie helmer Marco Petry directs 2024's Blame the Game. And in regard to "Game", Marco includes some off dubbing and a few locales that appear to be somewhere in urban Germany. "Dude, it's just a game night, what could go wrong?" Are we talking about the film here or some ill at ease, entertainment potluck? Anyway Blame the Game (originally titled Spieleabend) sort of reminded me of a 2018 flick with Jason Batemen and Rachel McAdams called Game Night. I stress the "sort of reminded" part. "Game" lacks Game Night's element of agog and deadpan sense of dry humor. I mean Bateman and McAdams trying to avoid kidnappers and gangsters is a heck of a lot more interesting than a bunch of cliched millennials sitting around playing good old Trivial Pursuit. So yeah, with Blame the Game director Petry fashions something with gags and characterizations straight from the annals of the early to mid-2000s. A man and a woman have a courting process (check). Their dogs become friendly with each other (check it). The same man and woman engage in the horizontal hokey pokey (check please). The same woman invites the man to a game night where he is judged and frowned upon by the woman's D-bag friends (including the ex, gut check). Finally, forced chaos and tension ensue with the addition of a dolt-like, next door neighbor persona who just happens to love hunting wild boar (checkmate). I mean think about it, "Game" is all so trite and hackneyed, and the only thing that saves it from being a total turkey is the somewhat pseudo chemistry of the leads in German actor Dennis Mojen (he plays Jan) and actress Janina Uhse (she plays the fetching Pia). They are rather appealing but sadly they're surrounding by a pedestrian, blowhard of a movie, where there just has to be scenes with some blotto fool running from a lion in an exhibit and some weirdo, compeer character caught inverted in a fishing net (never viewed that swipe before). No-hit "game".

TV slash occasional movie helmer Marco Petry directs 2024's Blame the Game. And in regard to "Game", Marco includes some off dubbing and a few locales that appear to be somewhere in urban Germany. "Dude, it's just a game night, what could go wrong?" Are we talking about the film here or some ill at ease, entertainment potluck? Anyway Blame the Game (originally titled Spieleabend) sort of reminded me of a 2018 flick with Jason Batemen and Rachel McAdams called Game Night. I stress the "sort of reminded part". "Game" lacks Game Night's element of agog and deadpan sense of dry humor. I mean Bateman and McAdams trying to avoid kidnappers and gangsters is a heck of a lot more interesting than a bunch of cliched millennials sitting around playing good old Trivial Pursuit. So yeah, with Blame the Game director Petry fashions something with gags and characterizations straight from the annals of the early to mid-2000s. A man and a woman have a courting process (check). Their dogs become friendly with each other (check it). The same man and woman engage in the horizontal hokey pokey (check please). The same woman invites the man to a game night where he is judged and frowned upon by the woman's D-bag friends (including the ex, gut check). Finally, forced chaos and tension ensue with the addition of a dolt-like, next door neighbor persona who just happens to love hunting wild boar (checkmate). I mean think about it, "Game" is all so trite and hackneyed, and the only thing that saves it from being a total turkey is the somewhat pseudo chemistry of the leads in German actor Dennis Mojen (he plays Jan) and actress Janina Uhse (she plays the fetching Pia). They are rather appealing but sadly they're surrounding by a pedestrian, blowhard of a movie, where there just has to be scenes with some blotto fool running from a lion in an exhibit and some weirdo, compeer character caught inverted in a fishing net (never viewed that swipe before). No-hit "game".

What a tremendous waste of time... At the beginning, it seems like a cute movie, in the romantic comedy style. By the middle of the movie, you already feel the urge to stop watching so as not to waste more time. But this urge battles with the expectation that it might get better. However, that's not what happens, quite the opposite. The movie takes on a ridiculously comic personality, even becoming vulgar. Don't waste a minute on it. In fact, I think even for teenagers, this movie is garbage. The plot is thin, the characters are shallow, and the humor is forced. It's almost painful to watch, and you keep hoping it will improve, but it just gets worse.