Blame the Game Movie Review: The game isn’t to blame, it’s the writers who are

Competitive games night among friends, notwithstanding, every single frame that unfolds once Pia and Jan head over to Karo’s comes right out of the predictable playbook. A nervous Jan, attempting to make a favourable impression, brings a gift and a game along (both recommendations from Alex). The gift, an airbag to protect cyclists in a crash, inflates of its own volition around Karo’s head and neck, almost choking her. Jan’s game is barely given a second thought and is tossed aside. The group is fixated on Jan’s limited knowledge of board games, instead; he says Settlers of Qatar instead of Catan, with Oliver quick to correct him. Let the judgement begin! What a god-awful start to the night, you’d say. Surprise, surprise. Everything has to go awry for things to be interesting, right? Wrong! Ingenious writing is the primary aspect that makes for interesting viewing. The issue here is not about things going wrong, it’s the cliched manner in which they do that’s the problem. Blame the Game just mashes up romcom highlights from a variety of films of the past. Even if the scenes themselves may not be lifted, the underlying themes are anything but unfamiliar. The “appearance” of Matthias (Stephan Luca), Pia’s ex, takes the cake. His desperate attempts to show Jan his place is annoying to sit through. He keeps trying to one up his “rival” by bringing up their romantic travels across the world (with pictures, no less) and his oh so successful dental practice. At one point, he is requested to sing and play the guitar. We get how jealous you are. Now, give it a rest. In all this overdone nonsense, it is revealed that Pia and Matthias were engaged before they broke up. The big conflict moment in the subpar narrative, it appears. The worst moment of the film, by far, is a nude table tennis match between the Jan and Matthias, the battle royale to impress a visibly irritated Pia. The vanquished must down an entire bottle of hot sauce. At this point, a bottle of hot sauce would be something to consider for a member of the audience as an alternative to the onscreen events.