Funny Games
Funny Games
R | 14 March 2008 (USA)
Funny Games Trailers

When Ann, husband George, and son Georgie arrive at their holiday home they are visited by a pair of polite and seemingly pleasant young men. Armed with deceptively sweet smiles and some golf clubs, they proceed to terrorize and torture the tight-knit clan, giving them until the next day to survive.

Reviews
matthewjs-56919

This is one of those "arthouse films" so I would take it with a grain of salt due to some quirky "indie" "artsy" choices that are made. Thats the best way I can put it without going into spoilers However as a home invasion film I think its a good movie. Give it a watch

... View More
lasttimeisaw

A double-bill of Michael Haneke's notoriously provocative home-invasion thriller FUNNY GAMES, its original version and the US shot-by-shot remake made a decade later with a different cast, they are basically the same film, the only noticeable revision is a landline telephone would be plausibly upgraded to a cellphone. Affixing death metal to high-brow classical music, FUNNY GAMES alerts us from the beginning of its irreconcilably conflicting parties in this game of torture and murder: the bourgeois nuclear family (emblazoned by their lakeside holiday residence and a private boat) versus two white-gloves-sporting, acedia-afflicted young psychopaths (whose backgrounds are completely in the shadows). It is very interesting to watch how genteel etiquette disintegrates into hostility on a moment's notice, and how it becomes a fortune to hostage if one is that prone to irritability yet not cautious enough to the consequences, although what is blatantly shocking is the want of clear motive behind these two amoral young men, who wallow in inflicting sadism and cruelty to innocent people, and are dangerously masked by a normal and friendly appearance. But after watching the same story twice (not recommended though), a viewer may sense something perniciously self-serving in the scene nearly the beginning, the couple can be cautioned by their friend (aka. the previous hostage), a warning out of desperation might not be a game-changer to overcome the perpetrators (who are in possession of a rifle), but at least, they can try to fight back and very likely break the vicious circleAlso one can second-guess that in lieu of complete resignation, the wife could have shown some bravura by jumping onto their neighbor's departing boat in the eleventh hour only if she knew it would be her last chance. To mitigate the ill-feeling stemmed from audience's emotional investment of the beleaguered family, Haneke opts for a novel schtick by allowing one of the young wrongdoer Paul (Frisch/Pitt) to occasionally break the 4th wall and even play God with a remote control when an unpremeditated accident croaking his companion, archly takes audience away from their heinous act and nattering hogwash, renders a refreshing sensation of levity, which is a crying reprieve at that point of the narrative (after sending both a dog and a child to meet their makers out of Haneke's convention-defying obduracy). The film is violent no doubt, but mercifully we are spared from witnessing direct simulation of killing save its grisly aftermath, and it is fire and brimstone for the two leads, in the earlier version, the late Susanne Lothar and Ulrich Mühe (who became a couple in real life after making this film) stupendously put themselves through the wringer of distress, terror and despair, command onerous brawn against physical hindrance (including in a challenging long take lasting more than ten minutes), and Lothar notably drains all her energy into a traumatized state that's too disturbing to look twice. The same impression is ineluctably blunted in the remake, due to the vanishing thrill of reiteration, nevertheless Naomi Watts, undergoes the same ordeal with equally gutsy virtuosity but less apparel.On the villain parts, a wide-eyed Michael Pitt totally and literally pales in comparison with Arno Frisch, whose bumptious self-assurance is simultaneously gnawing and sinister, whereas Frank Giering and Brady Corbet both make a good accomplice who is unpleasantly effete and morbidly creepy. Teasing with the line between reality and fiction, the sick underside of human frailties often overlooked by the prim and the proper, Haneke's succès-de-scandale is not for faint-hearted but an anglophone remake made in facsimile betrays his eagerness to unleash the bane on those subtitle-eschewing English-speaking Americans, a bespoke commodity speaks volumes of his faintly veiled intention.

... View More
grantss

The original Funny Games - German, made in 1997, written and directed by Michael Haneke - was great. Haneke decided to remake the movie for US audiences, and promptly screwed it up. Instead of thought- provoking, this is pretentious. Instead of innovative, this is second hand. Instead of suspenseful, this is boring. Maybe it was because I had seen the original so knew where it was going, but the plot was slow. Direction was ponderous and listless.Worst of all was the casting. Michael Pitt spells disaster for any movie he is in. Wooden, pretentious, irritating. Brady Corbet follows his lead. Naomi Watts does her usual over-acting. Tim Roth is a superb actor but had nothing to work with and deserves a lot better than this.

... View More
chuckbechard

This is going to be a very simple review - Funny Games might just be the worst movie I have ever seen. And this makes no sense because - Tim Roth...outstanding - Naomi Watts...great - the movie...terrible waste of time. Save yourself and just watch something...anything else. You will be happy that you made any other choice what so ever.

... View More