K-SCORE: 51
Director: Kyle Newacheck
Writer: Anders Holm
Starring: Adam DeVine, Blake Anderson, Anders Holm, Andrew Bachelor, Aya Cash, Chloe Bridges, Daniel Stern, Jamie Demetriou
Spoiler Level: Moderate
Dear Workaholics Guys,
If you want to take your screwball comedies to the next level, throw out your current playbook. Take the first draft of whatever script that you come up with and pick your favorite moment, your favorite joke, and instead of writing in some absurd luck-based means of keeping your characters from death or dismemberment, fucking kill them. I’m serious. Game Over, Man! would be a memorable film, ten times as good as it is now, if you have the guts to write your idiot selves right out of it.
In the middle of the film, Adam DeVine’s character throws an iron that has had a long series of cable ties strung together connected to it from the shattered glass window of one tower onto a fire escape of another tower. Then all three of you leads board the back of an ironing board which has been hooked up to the cable ties, and zip-line from one side to the other over a perhaps twenty story fall. The point of the comedy is that your characters are stupid. It’s that they’re irresponsible druggies and fuck-ups, and therefore can’t be John McClane. Let them try that as a joke and then write it to its natural conclusion. Embrace the unlikelihood that the iron sticks to the opposite fire escape for a moment, have them board the back of the iron, and have them start zip-lining, and then, of course, after the full weight of three people and an ironing board strains cable ties designed to resist about 20 pounds of pressure comes to bear, the weakest made plastic piece snaps, the iron dislodges, and idiots and ironing board go crashing to the ground. Film it. Film yourselves falling all that way, screaming about how bad of an idea this was, and then film the gory impact, and leave the camera in a static position as shattered spines and ruptured skulls ooze blood onto the street. Leave the camera there for three minutes with no music because I’m going to need all of that time to recover from my fit of hysterics.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. If we do that, we can’t bring the friends together in a meaningful way, nor can we tie up the terrorist plot satisfactorily. With regard to the former, trust me, no one gives a shit. We, your audience of Netflix subscribers, do not care about the Nintendo animatronic robot video game thing or Joel’s not-so-closeted homosexuality. We will not feel gypped. And with regard to the rest of the film, just keep doing what you were doing. Have Shaggy sing some more at gunpoint. Have the rapper billionaire shamelessly tortured with a smile on his face. Have a SWAT team bust through a few of the doors, have the hotel guests’ heads explode, have the terrorists panic and turn on each other, have one try to escape in the helicopter and immediately get shot down by an F-16, and have that guy from Home Alone throw his severed dick at someone and let the last shot be of him dying of an infection in a hospital bed.
Guys, if you’re not going to take your film seriously, fine, I won’t either. But if we’re going to be completely unhinged in the pursuit of comedy, you have to write that attitude into your actual plot. If everything just follows exactly as I expect it to, but you’re stupid as fuck all along the way without consequence, I’m going to be bummed out and bored. Have some courage, and kill yourselves. Then the title would make sense too.
Best,
Kyle Blackburn
