Summary
Blame the Game is middling at best, but it’s at least fun. You’ll never feel bored.
Forgive me for being foolish. I expected the German feature Blame the Game to be another Game Night. However, I still enjoyed it, to an extent, even if the scenarios felt a little cheap. The ending, however, indicates nightmarish modern dating, and I’ll explain why.
The whole concept of the movie is that the bike shop owner, Jan, falls in love with Pia, so he attends a game night with her wealthy, affluent friends. It’s a messy night and made messier when her ex shows up.
Pia and Jan end up together, but it’s not the type of relationship that will last
At the game night, Pia’s relationship history surfaces quickly as her ex, Mathias, turns up. Of course, he appears to be highly knowledgeable and experienced and has a financial upper hand over Jan, who immediately feels uncomfortable that he has to share a room with a man who is blatantly trying to compete and emasculate him.
But once Jan gets confident, he decides to enter into a dick-measuring competition with Mathias, frustrated that this man has blatantly tried to upend his relationship.
A fiery game of table tennis (which they both play naked) descends into chaos, as the loser, Mathias, has to down a bottle of hot sauce. He then flushes it down with breast milk from the fridge to make his situation worse (he eventually pukes).
But what’s relevant to all this is that Pia becomes fed up with Jan. She does not seem to understand why her boyfriend is frustrated with the evening when her friends have made him feel like a peasant and her ex, Mathias, has made him feel undeserving of her. His only option was to make himself appear like a stronger man.
But the real sting is when it’s revealed that Pia kissed Mathias a few weeks ago before she was official with Jan… apparently.
The timeline for all this is shaky, but my issue is the principle behind it. By the end of the movie, Jan has to make amends with Pia despite a massive question mark on her loyalty. Pia essentially gets the choice despite potentially being caught a bit loose.
Yes, I know, relationships can be complicated, especially with your ex, but if you were at a game night with your new partner, and your ex-fiance whom you happened to have kissed (in confusion, apparently) a few weeks prior shows up, then surely you’d leave the social event? If you are super serious about your new partner and are convinced the timeline of the kiss with your ex isn’t suspicious, you’d think it’s worth leaving the situation, correct?
The ending of Blame the Game is indicative of skewed modern dating, where men put women on unnecessary pedestals because they don’t see their own value. Jan, for all intents and purposes, put himself through an unnecessary night of hell and was frequently emasculated by his new girlfriend’s ex for no good reason.
Why are these storylines twisted these days? Surely, in this situation, Pia should have been making amends with Jan, not the other way around. We are creating an illusion of power dynamics in dating, where the compromised individual allows his boundaries to be breached. This is not the basis of a long-lasting relationship, as it’s a dreadful start.
It reminds me a little of The Idea of You, where an age-gap relationship is also skewed. The young, wealthy, and talented man is dumped by the older, less affluent, divorced woman. Who would you think holds the upper hand in that situation? You’d be surprised when you watch the film.
And no, I’m not saying that relationships are about power, by the way, but on a deeper psychological level, there are unspoken components to a relationship. We are biological beings, after all. There’s a theory that in relationships, one person always loves the other a little bit more. Maybe that’s the case for Jan, but I don’t believe Pia deserves him by the end of Blame the Game.
A game night descends into chaos in ‘Blame the Game’ (Credit – Netflix)
Final review
Despite my problems with the ending, there’s little point in taking Blame the Game too seriously. I did enjoy it. Sometimes, situational comedy can be simple, and this German Netflix movie proves that.
From awkward conversations to accidentally letting a parrot fly out of the window, Blame the Game follows similar, cheesy comedy beats you’d expect from The Hangover but far lighter. The pressure of the situation ramps up, and you can see Jan sweat as he navigates himself out of a tough spot.
However, I doubt this is anywhere near a memorable experience. Despite great performances, the middling script ensures the movie is watched once. I wish I had laughed more, but plenty of what I saw has been done over and over again in situational comedy. Once you’ve seen it before, you’ve seen it all.
Let’s not write off Blame the Game, though. It has some wit about it. It encourages the audience to root for Jan, meaning the script does work to some extent. We all like an underdog, even in modern dating situations.
