The 400-Word Review: Game Over, Man
By Sean Collier
March 27, 2018
BoxOfficeProphets.com

Oh, those are all the reviews for our movie?
As Netflix puts more emphasis on original feature films, the streaming network has begun to emerge as an intriguing home for work that would normally have difficulty reaching many American audiences. The service is already a repository for documentary and foreign-language features with limited brick-and-mortar prospects; in 2018, Netflix has the potential to solidify itself as a true rival to the cinema for many viewers.

If it hopes to do that, it needs to stay far away from movies like Game Over, Man.

An alleged comedy from the creative team behind (and stars of) the sitcom “Workaholics,” Game Over, Man follows a group of stoners and wannabe entrepreneurs (Adam Devine, Blake Anderson and Anders Holm; the latter also wrote the screenplay) through a limp Die Hard parody. They work at a hotel, a young mogul and social-media star books the place for a party, terrorists take control and hold everyone hostage.

It is difficult to convey how distressingly, confusingly unfunny Game Over, Man is. This is a movie that attempts for nothing but ridiculousness and dark slapstick, and yet its occasional brushes with humor are purely accidental. Every bit fails. Every setup misses; many feel half-conceived or incomplete. The few tricks the film has up its sleeve — bizarre cameos by lesser celebrities, chains of vulgarity, an obsessive focus on the phallus — are leaned on to no end, until the very nature of these crutches as humor is called into question.

Are there at least funny people in this movie? Yes. I like each and every one of them less for having seen Game Over, Man.

The film also has a perverse and alarming gore fetish, one to rival any horror film. (If anything, the level of carnage in Game Over, Man is more concerning than the bloodshed in a horror film, in that this is a film that seems to honestly believe that dismemberment and death are funny.) The unsupportable content in this film hardly stops at violence, however.

Most dumb comedies at least have the decency to be offensive accidentally; Game Over, Man is aggressively and deliberately hateful, laughing gleefully at moments of willful homophobia and misogyny. It’s treatment of gay characters is especially egregious, offensive to the point that I can’t recommend anyone watch Game Over, Man, no matter what; it’s below even curiosity. This is a truly awful film and its creators should be ashamed.

My Rating: 1/10

Sean Collier is the Associate Editor of Pittsburgh Magazine and a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association. Read more from Sean at pittsburghmagazine.com/afterdark