You're it!

March 23, 2018 8:55 AM

"I've played a game of tag for 23 years" - now coming to a cinema near you.
posted by Stark (27 comments total)

There's a lot of big names in this movie, and I kinda wanna see it, but with super low expectations.
posted by numaner at 9:04 AM on March 23, 2018

I'm assuming "no tag backs?" Cause if someone jumps out of the car boot to tag me, I'm tagging back. Or immediately running for the "friend" who aided them. Weddings would be impossible.

I do really admire this streak of keeping juvenile fun alive. I don't really have any of that in my life anymore, and it's good to see.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 9:12 AM on March 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

People do this stuff. Since Easter is coming it reminds me of these neighbors we had who did Easter egg hunts every year even though all the kids were now adults. We'd see them climbing all over the house, even climbing telephone poles, sometimes renting bucket lifters.

This was serious Easter egg hunting.
posted by eye of newt at 9:20 AM on March 23, 2018 [12 favorites]

I'm assuming "no tag backs?"

From the second paragraph of the article:

Since we had busy lives and lived hundreds of miles apart, we agreed on three rules. First, we would play it only in February each year; second, you were not allowed immediately to tag back the person who had tagged you; and finally, you had to declare to the group that you were "it".

The article is sweet. I don't think I'll be seeing the movie, though.
posted by Lexica at 9:22 AM on March 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

I choose not to spend much energy these days on “movies about men”, but this looks quite charming.
posted by matildaben at 9:30 AM on March 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

It will turn out to have been the friends we made along the way.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:51 AM on March 23, 2018 [7 favorites]

Well, I just lost the game.
posted by The Bellman at 9:53 AM on March 23, 2018 [9 favorites]

Toxic masculinity and patriarchy leave many men with poorly honed skills for independently maintaining social connections with other people, and often rely on their female partners to do that work for them.

This looks like a fun comedy, but also resonated with me in that way.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 9:55 AM on March 23, 2018 [7 favorites]

I also just lost the game.
posted by tangosnail at 9:58 AM on March 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

I, too, lost the game, and now I am sad.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 10:35 AM on March 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

Dammit. I lost the game.
posted by blurker at 10:36 AM on March 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

*uses sharpie to mark spot on head where the part of my brain that knows about the game is*

*grabs power drill*
posted by Strange Interlude at 10:45 AM on March 23, 2018 [11 favorites]

Is this the new Stephen King thriller?
posted by chavenet at 10:48 AM on March 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

It will turn out to have been the friends we made along the way.

Most deceptive Stephen King summary OF ALL TIME.
posted by Snarl Furillo at 11:29 AM on March 23, 2018 [9 favorites]

I am in favor of any movie about dudes, esp mostly white dudes, being competitive in ways that border on violence and there are no guns and nobody gets seriously hurt.

I took notes on the 9 previews before Black Panther: 8 were about Angry Dudes With Guns (7 starring white guys), plus A Wrinkle in Time. I could use substantially fewer movies about Angry White Guys with Guns, and if this is what we get instead, I'm fine with that.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 11:37 AM on March 23, 2018 [13 favorites]

I could use substantially fewer movies about Angry White Guys with Guns,

this is pretty much any non-action movie since the invention of cinema (minus some dramas and dark comedies)

I mean, for modern reference, see Seth Rogan's entire oeuvre

I'm pretty sure you saw white dude with guns previews because your theater groups previews by genre instead of by audience or demographic because that's just what corporate theater places do. other theaters might be different; our local artsy cinema, for example, showed previews for more indie flicks and documentaries with non-white directors during their screening of Black Panther
posted by runt at 12:03 PM on March 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

our local artsy cinema, for example, showed previews for more indie flicks and documentaries with non-white directors

None of which are the movies "about dudes, esp mostly white dudes, being competitive in ways that border on violence and there are no guns and nobody gets seriously hurt" that ErisLordFreedom described being in favor of. It seems like a pretty clear thing: action movies without guns where people don't get seriously hurt.

Documentaries and indie flicks are great, but they're not action movies. If you want an action movie, you probably won't be satisfied with a documentary.
posted by Lexica at 12:09 PM on March 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

In my early twenties my friends and I played a game called King of the Vampires in which whoever bit the previous King of the Vampires was the new King of the Vampires. “King” was a gender-neutral title; my then-girlfriend and a female friend were both king from time to time.

There were a few occasions (weddings, funerals) that were deemed solemn enough for us to enact temporary “no fighting, no biting” rules, but it was otherwise a free-for-all. There were two instances of someone being bitten while asleep and one title change that took place when the reigning king was ambushed during a sexual encounter.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 12:12 PM on March 23, 2018 [9 favorites]

None of which are the movies "about dudes, esp mostly white dudes, being competitive in ways that border on violence and there are no guns and nobody gets seriously hurt" [...] Documentaries and indie flicks are great, but they're not action movies.

sure, start with Charlie Chaplin and you'll find yourself in a fairly rich vein of physical comedy that navigates the threshold between grievous harm and light humor. my most recent memory of this, as I noted above, is a lot of the Seth Rogan / Judd Apatow oeuvre of bro-dudes being sometimes weirdly competitive about things but still being friends that also features a lot of physical comedy. the Hangover is another movie in this genre of not-ultra-violent buddy comedies featuring white bros (and one super racist depiction)

if I have a point it's not that these movies are excusable but that treating middle-brow bro-ish white dude comedy movies like the one in this post as some kind of special exception to some cultural norm seems like a very low bar to set
posted by runt at 12:24 PM on March 23, 2018

> Salvor Hardin:
"Toxic masculinity and patriarchy leave many men with poorly honed skills for independently maintaining social connections with other people, and often rely on their female partners to do that work for them.

This looks like a fun comedy, but also resonated with me in that way."

No. Because tag CAN POSSIBLY be violent, and I know your position on that.
posted by Samizdata at 1:04 PM on March 23, 2018

I have been playing the same game of tag with my husband for roughly ten years now. It is a different game with two because you are always aware of who is it and we have time limits on tag backs. Midnight, wake-up time and whenever we've been apart for at least 8 hours are the only valid tagging times. If you are it, you can retag by saying "You're still it." If you mess up a retag and say "You're it," you've just made yourself it. Ties are broken by rock-paper-scissors. He re-tagged me when I reached the altar at our wedding since it had been over 8 hours.
posted by soelo at 1:05 PM on March 23, 2018 [15 favorites]

action movies without guns where people don't get seriously hurt.

There's this small, really niche, interest you may never have heard of called "sports". Sometimes people make movies about it even, although rarely as it's so little known.
posted by fshgrl at 1:07 PM on March 23, 2018 [5 favorites]

There's this small, really niche, interest you may never have heard of called "sports".

I like the part where repeated traumatic brain injury counts as "not getting seriously hurt".
posted by The Bellman at 1:42 PM on March 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

Lots of sports don't include much if any head trauma. I'm not a sports person but even I know this. On the other hand, some sports allow (or even wholly consist of) actual fighting. In short, sports are a land of contrasts.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:35 PM on March 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I too am cautiously optimistic. I like that the trailer signaled that this movie is interested in something beyond wacky hijinks punctuated by one moment of shallow emotional revelation hastily added to the screenplay towards the end to make it feel less stupid. I appreciate that it seems like it doesn't play into the naggy buzzkill trope for the women in the film. For a goofy comedy aimed at men, it seems like it's on the right track.

This looks like what Game Night could have been, were it not bad, which it was.
posted by Emily's Fist at 6:59 PM on March 23, 2018

Like all remakes of Japanese films, this one has a lot to live up to. CW: gore.
posted by Cogito at 9:29 PM on March 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

Oh good because I've never seen a movie about a bunch of grown manbabies and a one-of-the-guys token woman. How thrilling!
posted by DarlingBri at 10:12 AM on March 24, 2018