| Funny Games U.S. | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Michael Haneke |
| Produced by | Hamish McAlpine Christian Baute Chris Coen Andro Steinborn Naomi Watts |
| Written by | Michael Haneke |
| Starring | Naomi Watts Tim Roth Michael Pitt Brady Corbet Devon Gearhart |
| Cinematography | Darius Khondji |
| Editing by | Monika Willi |
| Studio | Celluloid Dreams Tartan Films Film4 Productions |
| Distributed by | Warner Independent Pictures |
| Release date(s) | October 20, 2007 (London Film Festival) March 14, 2008 (US limited) April 4, 2008 (UK) |
| Running time | 112 minutes |
| Country | United States France United Kingdom Austria Germany Italy |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $15 million |
| Box office | $7,938,872 |
Funny Games is a 2007 psychological thriller film written and directed by Michael Haneke, a remake of Haneke's 1997 Austrian film of the same name. Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, and Michael Pitt star in the main roles. The film is a shot-for-shot remake of its predecessor, translated into English and set in the United States with different actors.[1] Exterior scenes were filmed on Long Island.[1]
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The film begins with a loving family - George Farber (Tim Roth), his wife Ann (Naomi Watts), his son Georgie (Devon Gearhart) and their dog, arriving at their lake house. Their next-door neighbor, Fred (Boyd Gaines) is seen with two young men, Peter (Brady Corbet) and Paul (Michael Pitt), who seem to be their friends or relatives. The two young men come over to borrow eggs. Ann is in the kitchen cooking while George and Georgie are outside by the lake, tending to their boat. They seem friendly, and they use George’s golf club. When the men depart with the eggs they soon return with them broken. After asking for more eggs which also end up broken, Ann becomes frustrated, but when George tries to force the men to leave, Peter breaks George's leg with the golf club and they take the family hostage. Ann goes to call for help on the family's cell phone, but finds it unusable, having been earlier dropped in the sink by Peter. Paul then guides Ann on a hunt to find the family's dog, which he had killed with George's golf club. When the family's other neighbors arrive for a visit, Ann passes the two men off as friends until the visitors leave.
The family is forced to participate in a number of sadistic games in order to stay alive. Paul asks if the family wants to bet that they will be alive by 9:00 in the morning, though he doubts that they will be. Between playing their games, the two men keep up a constant pattern. Paul frequently ridicules Peter's weight and lack of intelligence. He describes a number of contradicting stories of Peter's past, though no definitive explanation is ever presented as to the men's origins or motives. At one point, Georgie tries to escape and runs to the gate. He attempts to climb the locked gate but changes his mind and goes to the neighbors' house passing through the water. Inside the house Georgie attempts to shoot Paul with a shotgun, but the gun fails to go off. Paul returns him to the living room, along with the shotgun. After a few more games, the men play a counting-out game between the family members on the basis that whoever gets counted out will be shot, but Georgie suddenly panics and makes a run for his life, which results in Peter shooting him dead. He and Paul then leave, Paul a little annoyed that Peter didn't follow the rules of their game to the letter.
George and Ann weep for their loss, but eventually resolve to survive. Ann flees the house while George, with a broken leg, desperately tries to call for help on the malfunctioning phone. Ann struggles to find help, only to be re-captured by Peter and Paul, who return her to the house. Stabbing George, the men attempt to force Ann to choose for her husband, between a painful, prolonged death with the knife or a quick death with the shotgun. Instead, Ann seizes the shotgun on the table in front of her and kills Peter. Enraged, Paul confiscates the shotgun and starts looking for the television remote. Upon finding it, he literally rewinds all the occurrences back to before Ann grabs the shotgun, thereby breaking the fourth wall. On the 'do over', Paul snatches the shotgun away and admonishes her, saying she isn't allowed to break the rules. They then kill George and take Ann, bound and gagged, out on the family's boat early the next morning. Around eight o'clock, they nonchalantly throw her into the water to drown, thus winning their bet. They dock at the house of the neighbors that had previously visited the family, and request some eggs, thereby restarting their cycle of murder.
The film made its British premiere at the London Film Festival on October 20, 2007.[2][3] Its United States premiere was at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival on January 19, 2008. It began a limited release in the United States and Canada on March 14, 2008, distributed by Warner Independent.[4] A wider release to more theaters came on April 8, 2008. The film was shown at the Istanbul Film Festival in April 2008. It did not receive a wide theatrical release in the United States before coming out on DVD. Funny Games was a box office failure, grossing a little more than half of its $15 million budget. Guardian writer Geoffrey Macnab included Funny Games's lack of success among the reasons for the closure of Tartan Films, which co-produced the film and released it in the United Kingdom.[5] In Germany, the film was released under the title "Funny Games U.S.".[6]
The DVD was released on June 10, 2008, in the US. The DVD does not contain any extra material but instead it includes both widescreen and full screen editions on one disc. In the UK, the DVD and Blu-ray were released on July 28 with the extra material being the original theatrical trailer, Q&A with producers Hamish McAlpine and Chris Coen, interviews with the cast, viral video clips and film notes.
The film received mixed reviews from critics. As of September 6, 2008, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 51 percent of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 132 reviews.[7] Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 41 out of 100, based on 33 reviews.[8]
Todd Gilchrist from IGN called the film "Unrelenting and brilliant, Funny Games is a truly great film – an incisive, artistic triumph that doubles as a remarkably thrilling and unique cinematic experience." Conversely, Joshua Rothkopf from Time Out New York called the film "a sour project that defines anti-imaginative."[9] A.O. Scott of the New York Times wrote: "At least with the remake Funny Games, Mr. Haneke shows a certain kinship with someone like Eli Roth, whose Hostel movies have brought nothing but scorn from responsible critics."[10] The Chicago Sun-Times review of March 14, 2008 gave the film a mere half-star out of a possible four.
The Times ranked it No. 25 on its 100 Worst Films of 2008 list.[11]
The film appeared on several critics' top 10 lists of the best films of 2008.[12] Movie City News shows that the film appeared in 12 different top ten lists, out of 286 different critics lists surveyed, the 53rd most mentions on a top ten list of the films released in 2008.[13]
The music in the introduction and the closing credits is "Bonehead" by Naked City from the album Grand Guignol.
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