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The Game: Not Really Worth Playing
By Paul Tatara
CNN Entertainment News


(CNN) -- Have you ever seen a movie called "The Out-of-Towners?" It stars Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis as a hapless couple who, during a trip to New York City, fall victim to every conceivable travel-related disaster. They lose their luggage, they get mugged, their hotel reservation is non-existent, they get rained on, etc. Well, David Fincher's new movie, "The Game" is like "The Out-of-Towners," except that Michael Douglas plays Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis, and instead of laughing at the situation, you're supposed to be overcome with suffocating anxiety.

OK, that's not completely true. Luckily, the first half of "The Game," in which Douglas is cursed by a wildly unlikely set of pre-arranged misfortunes, has a tone that suggests Fincher is shooting for something approaching black comedy, never mind that the script is comprised of the same joke told over and over again. This is one of those movies that's so proudly and repetitively unbelievable, lots of people are going to think they're watching something sharp and complex. It's not funny enough to be a real comedy, not scary enough to be a real thriller, and not short enough to be an episode of "The Twilight Zone," which is what it most resembles. Lug-heads will be anxious to talk about how "tricky" it is at the next party.

I suspect audiences are going to eat it up. It will come as no surprise to movie fans that Douglas plays Mr. In Control. My first response is to say that I've never really liked Michael Douglas' performances, but in thinking it over, I realize that this isn't true at all. I don't like the characters he chooses to play. The clenched jaw, the expensive suits, the cell phone, the slicked-back hair- Mr. In Control. At one point during "The Game," when somebody asks him if there's a problem, he responds, "Sorry, I'm not aware of that term." Are we honestly supposed to relate to this guy?

Obviously Douglas delivers the goods when inhabiting these characters, because every time he pops up on screen I feel like I wanna smack him. But even I can get my fill. He gets smacked and banged around so often in this movie, it would have been easier if Fincher had just chained him behind a Oldsmobile and drug him up and down the street a couple hundred times. That's the story with "The Game" -- run the rich guy through a wringer for a couple hours while the audience laughs at, and is eventually alarmed by, his misfortune.

This might have played if there had been some vague semblance of humanity thrown into the mix, but Fincher's work (he also directed "Seven," in which the only remotely likable character winds up getting her head Federal Expressed to her husband) makes "A Clockwork Orange" seem like "Art Linkletter's House Party." What's going on is Douglas has been given an odd birthday gift by his brother (Sean Penn, in a great cameo that contains shadings of the high-strung joker he played in "Carlito's Way.") A company called Consumer Recreation Services will do a series of psychological tests on Douglas, then, without telling him what's going to take place, they'll involve him in a "game" that's specifically tailored to add some spice to his life.

One evening, Douglas finds a blood-splattered dummy lying in the driveway of his mansion. His father (as we see in flashbacks) committed suicide by jumping off of this very building, and the dummy is dressed just like dear old dad. Soon, Douglas finds a key stuffed in the dummy's mouth, and the game is on. At this point, abandon all hope. The so-called game is so full of red herrings, rigged autos, rigged elevators, rigged guns, and rigged people, the entire premise becomes aggressively absurd. And I'm not nit-picking here.

There must be at least 30 instances during the film where Douglas' jeopardy could only have been contrived by scores of people keeping a straight face while following him everywhere he goes and reading his mind every single step of the way. It also gets very annoying that there's nothing dramatic or tense about anything that happens to him in the first hour. It's like Penn signed Douglas up to have his life turned into the world's largest whoopee cushion.

Nobody sticks a sign on Douglas' back that says "kick me," but that's just because it would be too easy. He does, however, get drinks spilled all over him at a ritzy restaurant, witnesses a fake heart attack, is driven in a fake ambulance to a fake hospital, is trapped in a rigged elevator, loses his briefcase (which was rigged so that he couldn't open it anyway), falls into a Dumpster, loses his Amex card, is framed into looking like he's had a drug-fueled orgy in a swanky hotel room, burns his hand in a room where the water faucet doesn't work, and has a rabid 100-pound Rottweiler dropped from a helicopter onto his head. (OK, I made up that last one, but it wouldn't have seemed out of place.)

In the latter part of the film, things get progressively more violent and you're supposed to be horrified, but after what Douglas has been through, it's like asking the audience to shriek and dial 911 when Bugs Bunny gets nailed by an anvil. It all looks very nice, anyway. Fincher (a former video director) has toned down the photographic style that he incorporated into "Seven," which appeared to have been filmed through algae. Between Douglas' sometimes knowingly amused performance and some well-edited action sequences, I wasn't humiliated by the experience, but, come on guys, how dumb are we supposed to be?

"The Game" is slick and violent, but you don't feel anywhere near the amount of menace that seems to be intended. The scariest part is that it contains the supremely foolish Jefferson Airplane song, "White Rabbit." Violence, profanity, and general paranoia ... just like a trip to Manhattan. No nudity. Rated R. 128 minutes.


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