Game Over, Man

Release Date: March 23, 2018
Runtime: 101 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Studio: Netflix
Director: Kyle Newacheck
Cast: Adam Devine; Anders Holm; Blake Anderson; Aya Cash; Daniel Stern; Neal McDonough; Rhona Mitra

This movie is awful. It’s loud, obnoxious and dumb…much like the three lead characters in this slacker version of “Die Hard.” Call it “Die Soft and Stupid.”

Alexxx (Adam Devine, the three x’s are intentional), Darren (Anders Holm), and Joel (Blake Anderson) are best friends working together as housekeepers in a luxury hotel. While a VIP party for some Instagram star is raging upstairs, a gang of ruthless terrorists who proceed to hold the entire crowd hostage overtakes the hotel. The “Dude Crew,” as the three friends refer to themselves, must figure out a way to thwart the terrorists, stay alive, and, oh yeah, make us laugh.

Let’s start with the three leads: their banter is not cute, nor is it funny. I have no problem with bro-humor, which this film clearly is going for, but the gags presented here are groin inducing rather than elbow tickling. An early scene sees the three hapless housekeepers (supposedly) cleaning a room dotted throughout with recently used condoms. Alexxx and Joel try to snap a goofy picture with one of the used condoms splayed across Darren’s face while he is passed out from smoking some salvia. Hardy-har. It doesn’t get any better from there, with scatological humor and gay panic moments abounding. I won’t even go into what happens to one of the hostages later in the film.

Furthermore, this is an extraordinarily violent film. There is a glaring disconnect since the violence wants to be played for laughs, but when it occurs, it is so bloody and horrific that it immediately erases all of the intended humor. At one point, the three friends settle an argument by shooting at each other. How is this funny? I can’t believe that a movie produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg would be this exceedingly stupid and, perhaps most inexcusably, boring.

Devine, Holm, and Anderson, the brains behind the Comedy Central show “Workaholics” display hardly any camaraderie that would lead one to believe that the three are best friends. Frankly, they seem to really dislike each other and make amends only when the plot requires them to do so. Only Devine stands out as displaying any sort of charisma, while Utkarsh Ambudkar, as the pimped-out Instagram star, and Daniel Stern as a stupefyingly un-PC hotel manager, both have a few fun moments…the only fun moments to be found in the hour and forty-one minutes it takes to get through this crap. The script is lame with nary a joke approaching anything in the way of true comedy, the action is loud, ugly and mean-spirited, and the three lead characters, clearly intended to be lovable doofs, come across as just plain shitheads.

“Game Over, Man.” Indeed.