Game Night

  Max (Jason Bateman) and Annie (Rachel McAdams) are a loving couple who met over and share a love for competitive boardgames - quizzes, Jenga, charades, Risk, Pictionary... you know, shitty, entry-level boardgames. I'm not going to bring up Eurogames because they're obviously after party games with more direct competition, but they've spent years running a weekly game night and haven't even gotten to stuff like Apples to Apples or Quiplash.

 Amateurs.

 Ahem. So. Max and Annie have a pretty stable group of friends they have over to play stuff (Lamorne Morris, Kylie Bunbury and Billy Magnussen, plus some random plus ones), all the while trying to avoid having to invite their creepy policeman neighbour (Jesse Plemons), whose hilariously awkward attempts at being social and the ways they're shot are one of the highlights of the movie.

MVP

 Their routine is thrown into disarray when Max's overachieving brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) comes into town. their relationship is... well, pretty unhealthy, what with Brooks casting shade on Max every chance he gets. So after some pretty entertaining, low-key games of one-upmanship, Brooks invites everyone over to their house for their next game night and promises a special surprise.

 The surprise being that he's hired one of those augmented reality outfits to put together a mystery game for everyone to solve. The prize to whoever solves it first: his Corvette Stingray. Soon after that announcement a couple of thugs break in, beat up Brooks, and kidnap him.
 The other players (which now include a very funny Sharon Horgan as Billy Magnussen's current plus one) of course assume this is all part of the game, and set out to win in several different ways. Max and Annie cheat by tracking Brooks' phone, Ryan and Sarah decide to find the outfit that put the game together and bribe their way to victory, and Kevin and Michelle play properly while bickering about a newly revealed marital indiscretion.

 What follows is a ridiculous mix of chases, reveals, twists, more reveals, more twists, all accompanied by some pretty great jokes as the crew butts heads with actual, dangerous criminals played by Danny Houston and Michael C. Hall. 

 Directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein direct with a lot of energy, crack comedic timing and a lot of visual flair and inventive shots (a rare thing in modern comedy; at a guess, it was a big factor in netting them the chance to direct the D&D movie). The script, by Mark Perez (reportedly with some extensive rewrites from the directors) has exactly the right mix of running gags, cutesy character moments and clever/silly conceits*, providing an excellent opportunity to watch a bunch of ridiculously attractive people (plus Jesse Plemons) put themselves into (and sometimes dig themselves out of) a bunch of goofy situations.
 All tied up with a very cool synthwave soundtrack courtesy of Cliff Martinez.

 At the risk of using a horrible adjective, it's fucking delightful.

 I'm eagerly awaiting the sequel where the game night crew play Talk to Me. Or a crossover where the Dungeon & Dragons sequel pulls back and shows that the game night crew are playing that movie's characters.

*: Such as the big action scene essentially being a game of keep away.