Review of Funny Games (2008) by 30Cents — 19 Jun 2015

Under weighted by all of its cliches and terrible dialogue, Funny Games is nothing more than an excuse to sell movie tickets.

Plot:

The film starts out with a family of 3, a mother, a father, and a son who is on their way to the summer vacation home where this movie is taken place. The movie hits us with a heavy-metal song as soon as the title appears, it does not have anything to do with the movie itself, kind of random that it is there. The family pulls up and unpacks everything that they had brought with them, then they hear someone from the backyard. Two men with white golf suits on (similar to the costumes in A Clockwork Orange) ask for eggs, the family gives them some eggs as they requested. The two men request more eggs, the family tries to force the two men away, but one of the men gets angry and breaks the dad's leg with a golf club. Instead of trying to kill these idiots who broke into their house, the mother and the son try to comfort the father while the antagonists keeps them hostage.

The two main villains force the family to play games with them in order to stay alive, one of the two men asks the mother and the father betting they will be alive by 9:00 A.M the next morning. Why can't the mother or the son who is not injured just kill these men, and why are they forced to make a bet? Anyway, the two men force the mother to strip while the father and the son painfully watch her, we then get a short story from the two men mentioning their pasts with each other, this has nothing to do with the story line, and it is never explained what is causing these men to torture this family.

The son tries to find a way to stop these men by sneaking out of the house, he tries to climb over a fence to the neighbors house, but finds they are dead implied that they have been killed by the same men. Instead of going to another house and getting help, the son turns back around to go back to his family where the sadistic mad men are. The son grabs a shotgun he finds upstairs and attempts to kill one of the men, but of course is fails to go off and the man grabs the shotgun from him. The son is forced back downstairs with his mother and father, the two mad men play a small game of eeny meeny miny moe to see who will die first, the last word ends on the son, he tries to escape but he his shot off-screen.

The two sadistic men then leave the house to go get something, we then get a seven minute conversation between the mother and the father losing the life of their son. This scene only has one camera shot, and goes no where with the plot besides talking about calling the police and only shows them weeping. The mother tries to get the father to come with her, but unfortunately with the father's broken leg he cannot leave with her. The mother then tries to call for help on the street, why can't she just knock at someone else's door to get help? Anyway, a car comes up then the screen fades back to the father in pain.

The two sadistic mad man capture the mom again and forces them to continue their game. The mom is forced to decide what to do next, to kill her husband slowly with a knife, or kill him quickly with a shotgun that is lying right in front of her. The mom finally does the right thing and picks up the shotgun and kill one of the sadistic mad men, but that is overshadowed by the other man who is still alive. The last mad man alive then picks up a T.V remote and initiates breaking the 4th wall by rewinding the entire scene to pretend his partner never died. There are so many things wrong with this it's is too confusing to talk about, and of course, this is never explained, thanks movie for making your plot worse than it already is. So after bringing his partner back to life, the attempt to grab the shotgun ultimately fails, one of the men then takes the shotgun and kills the dad.

The scene then transitions to the next morning the two men take the mom all tied up in a row boat, once again she tries to escape by grabbing a knife and cutting the rope, but fails and is thrown in the water. The two men then go to another house backyard and asks the neighbor for more eggs, implying that they will do this again, the movie then ends with the same awful music it had in the beginning.

Final Opinion:

Funny Games is a poorly directed film by a foreign director, the film was remade 10 years prior to this movie's remake. The director seemed to have wanted more attention for this film by making the movie all over again, just with American actors. Naomi Watts and Tim Roth completely embarrasses them selves by poorly acting in this film. This movie overall does a good job of keeping you in your seat hoping the movie will get better but seeing that the ending sucked.

This is hands down, the worst movie I have ever seen, the movie is so slow of getting to its main point: kill the family. The movie tries to be an "Art Film" this is in no means an art film of any sort. Don't even look at this film.