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Funny Games

EMAILPRINTWarner Independent Pictures

Funny Games reviews
41
4.2 User Score:

Mixed or average reviews

Based on 33 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 132 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info

Genre(s): Horror  |  Suspense/Thriller

Written by: Michael Haneke

Directed by: Michael Haneke

Release Date:
Theatrical: March 14, 2008
DVD: June 10, 2008

Running Time: minutes, Color

Origin: UK / USA / France

Summary

RATING: R for terror, violence and some langauge

Starring Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt, Brady Corbet, Boyd Gaines, Siobhan Fallon, Devon Gearhart, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt, Brady Corbet, Boyd Gaines, Siobhan Fallon, and Devon Gearhart

In this provocative and brutal thriller, a vacationing family gets an unexpected visit from two deeply disturbed young men. Their idyllic holiday turns nightmarish as they are subjected to unimaginable terrors and struggle to stay alive. (Warner Independent Pictures)

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

A chilly and extraordinarily controlled treatise on film violence, Funny Games punishes the audience for its casual bloodlust by giving it all the sickening torture and mayhem it could possibly desire. Neat trick, that.

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89

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

You can take a page from Wes Craven before he went flat and keep repeating, "It's only a movie; it's only a movie; it's only a movie." But is it?

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88

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

The experience of watching Funny Games, be it the original or this version, is never forgotten, whatever your ultimate impression of the film.

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88

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Funny Games is not entertainment but it is an experience.

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83

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Can a movie be gripping and repellent at the same time? In Funny Games, a mockingly sadistic and terrifying watch-the-middle-class-writhe-like-stuck-pigs thriller, the director Michael Haneke puts his characters in a vise, and the audience too.

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80

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

By and large, reviewers have conceded that the picture is exceptionally gripping and suspenseful while deriding its moral subtext as a crock. The only explanation possible for such fuming pettiness, in my opinion, is the fact that Michael Haneke isn’t one of us.

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80

Empire Damon Wise

A stylish, darkly satirical horror-thriller, raising serious questions about Hollywood’s sanitisation of violence.

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75

Portland Oregonian Stan Hall

One might reasonably despise Funny Games and consider Haneke an exploitative hypocrite. Still, whether it's the original or the replica, this is a film that is impossible to enjoy and difficult to forget.

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75

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Is Funny Games an unqualified success? No, and for this reason: In order to analyze the devolution of violence into entertainment, the premise obliges the film to superimpose a complicated game atop the genre's simple one – in other words, it makes a game out of the game it condemns.

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75

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Watts, who is one of the film's executive producers, brings a taut intelligence to the proceedings, but her character, like Roth's, is more archetype than actual person.

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70

Dallas Observer Jim Ridley

Haneke rigs the movie into a weapon against its audience. Like the infected porn that destroys perverts in Cronenberg's "Videodrome," Funny Games means to kill our pleasure in the very thing we theoretically paid to see: zipless, guilt-free, morally untroubled mayhem.

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70

Washington Post John Anderson

While the movie's star -- and ruler, and ship's captain, and grand poobah -- is Haneke himself, his actors are sublime.

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70

The Hollywood Reporter Stephen Farber

Perhaps the best way to appreciate the picture, its few intellectual pretensions notwithstanding, is as a classy horror film with a particularly nasty edge. It's not exactly entertainment, but it casts a poisonous spell.

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50

Boston Globe Ty Burr

If this is daring in theory, it's a failure in practice. Exactingly well-made, the movie is grueling and unpleasant in the extreme - that's the point - but it's also working from a specious premise, that film-school Brechtian devices can bring on mass enlightenment.

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50

TV Guide Ken Fox

The film is merciless in its depiction of death and suffering, Pitt and Corbet are perfectly cast, and Watts, who also served as executive producer, gives a disturbingly raw performance.

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50

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Funny Games is fundamentally a bourgeois exercise in authorial sadism. As the methodical games grind on, the suffocatingly beige and white surroundings start to look like a mausoleum.

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50

Slate Dana Stevens

Many American viewers may take Haneke at his word and walk out midway through this grueling ethics exam of a movie. But much as I may resent the facile polemics of Haneke's shame-the-viewer project, I have to respect the way that he nailed me, trembling, to my seat.

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50

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

It’s one thing to make a movie filled with mayhem and then implicate the audience for watching it; it’s another thing entirely to come back ten years later with the same movie, hype it with a marketing campaign, and try to implicate the viewer again. One nice thing about America is that you can’t be tried twice for the same crime.

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40

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Haneke's new Funny Games has a current of bleak humor that comes through more clearly when you're not reading subtitles. It remains a horrifying, implacable mind-fuck, liable to be widely misunderstood and widely despised.

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38

Premiere Glenn Kenny

The picture, remade by the maestro Haneke himself, is every bit as gripping, suspenseful and upsetting as the original. And it's even more of a crock.

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38

USA Today Claudia Puig

So sadistic and disturbing, Games is easily the toughest movie to sit through since 1994's "Natural Born Killers."

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38

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

A patronizing, self-satisfied piece of work, Funny Games is Michael Haneke's way of chastising us for blindly following the traditional rules of entertainment.

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30

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

The new movie wears an air of old hat. I would absolutely defend Haneke’s right to relaunch his broadside on our voyeuristic vices, but he’s not keeping up with the times; he’s behind them.

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30

Variety Derek Elley

As shocking and deliberately manipulative as the original movie and -- some may reckon -- even more pointless.

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25

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Funny Games is an art house "Hostel" -- it mistakes self-consciousness for intelligence.

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25

New York Post Lou Lumenick

The joke is on arthouse audiences who show up for Funny Games, which is basically torture porn every bit as manipulative and reprehensible as "Hostel," even if it's tricked out with intellectual pretension.

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25

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Just because it's a conscious commentary on other vile, useless, pointless cinematic exercises doesn't make it any less vile, useless and pointless.

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20

Newsweek David Ansen

That this relentless barrage of psychological and physical torture is extremely well made and powerfully performed--Watts hurls herself into her physically demanding role with heroic conviction--somehow makes it worse.

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20

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Professional obligations required that I endure it, but there's no reason why you should.

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16

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

One thing you can say about Michael Haneke's unbelievably brutal thriller, Funny Games, is that it's an experience: an unpleasant, unsettling, cruelly manipulative and finally hateful experience, but an experience nonetheless. You'll likely lose some sleep over this one.

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0

The New York Times A.O. Scott

The film calls attention to its own artificial status. It actually knows it’s a movie! What a clever, tricky game! What fun! What a fraud.

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0

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

In addition to being borderline unendurable, Funny Games is inexplicable, and I don't mean in any philosophical sense.

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0

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Haneke’s assault on our fantasy lives is shallow, unimaginative, and glacially unengaged--a sucker punch without the redeeming passion of punk.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 4.2 (out of 10) based on 132 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Jonty P gave it a1:
A feel bad movie which left me angry and frustrated. Would love to see a remake where Tim Roth works out and kicks some ass. Rich people without bodyguards, closed circuit tv and police backup, I dont really think so. Its a human zoo - not a human jungle- yet!

Luciano B gave it a0:
Haneke's stupid medicine was neither necessary nor effective. Despite the fact that it was very well crafted, I hated this movie, not because it denied me the violence, but because it denied me the justice. This movie is just an exercise in torturing the audience in the wrong way for the wrong reasons.

Nick O gave it a9:
I think a lot of people have missed the point here.

HB SL gave it a1:
If i ever had doubts about writing this, petros lifted them: part of me suspects the film was indeed made by and for people who are convinced to be better than others, to be "intellectuals". Such arrogance has to hide lack of self confidence. But back to the film. Mr. Haneke, I was alone on a business trip and ventured by chance on the hotel room tv into FGU.S. just as the torture had started. I was hooked, and yes, the movie is very good at that. a poisonous hook, for it drowned me slowly, in disbelief and I couldn't stop, hoping something within the movie would. And of course that never happens. Is that why petros thinks it's genius? and with him the large majority of critics i've read? a week later, i still feel depressed and wounded and miserable. bad and unkind to others. some scenes won't go away and i think of my wife and my kids. if i wanted to hurt someone i love i would get them to watch this. Haneke, you added a bit of misery to this world. And frankly i still wonder what stopped you there: couldn't they have severed a limb from the kid before shooting him? say, after they used the severed arm to rape his mother? for, say, 8 to 10 minutes? what stopped you? too many of your own kids or parents tortured in real life? or were they not enough? would that be too "gore" for intellectuals like petros and yourself? why not have your family play in it? THAT would have been something for you to watch as spectator! THAT would have amde a point! and critics would wet their pants even more in appreciation! Ts ts ts, very disappointing, what a coward... Seriously, I did read a couple of things on your movies, themes, etc. to try and understand: the questions without the answers, etc. Fine, but i still don't get it. Is this movie of any use? haven't all the things you pretend to denounce or show been told elsewhere already? the vast majority of "intellectuals" who will enjoy this movie and watch it again (like the our friend petros) are most probably exactly the kind of people critics believe you are denouncing...Let me say it again: Haneke, you made the world a little bit worse. And people, fancy hurting the ones you love a bit more than you do on a normal day? Get them to watch this. I almost forgot Petros: good luck for surviving the cold air "du haut des cimes" buddy. hb

Devin gave it a0:
Stupidest F**king movie I've ever seen. Everything was bad. And yes, the actor rewinding the movie to change what happened, even f**king worse. Absolutely nothing good to say about this movie!!

fred fl gave it a3:
This was actually a scifi film. "Grand Theft Auto 2200". That's why the boys (players) didn't care about the victims and why rewind worked. That's the only sense I can make out of it. Otherwise, it was a waste of time.

petros gave it a10:
The comments for this film is proof that this world is divided unevenly in two categories - smart (just a few unfortunately) and unbelievably stupid (the majority) - go watch iron man and don't insult us with your ignorance. the original is the best film ever made, haneke's only mistake was making a remake in order to approach a brader audience. he should know better. what do you expect from people who can't watch films with subtitles. nothing obviously.

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