ShareThis"Funny Games" is less an entertainment than a battle of wills between Austrian writer-director Michael Haneke and viewers, who may find themselves, a few minutes into the movie, asking the musical question, "Should I stay or should I go?"An English-language remake of Haneke's own 1997 German-language film, "Funny Games" is not funny ha-ha. It definitely tilts toward funny-strange territory. It's a film about violence that shows very little violence (but more than enough blood).Yet while it criticizes violence in American films, it also doesn't do enough to set itself apart from the same pornography of cruelty and pain that it ridicules. What's the old catchphrase -- if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem."Funny Games" begins with George (Tim Roth), Ann (Naomi Watts) and son Georgie (Devon Gearhart) testing each other's opera knowledge as they cruise along in their SUV, sailboat in tow. The camera keeps a distance, avoiding faces at first. Viewers are supposed to form an impression from the conversation, music, expensive toys and verdant surroundings.As they approach their vacation home in a gated Long Island community, they stop to speak to the neighbors with whom they've scheduled a golf game. Ann and George notice that their friends seem tense; also, with them are two strange young men dressed casually in white.Settling in, George and Georgie secure the sailboat at the dock while Ann starts preparing dinner and the family dog, Lucky, reestablishes his dominion over the house. The camera lingers on a knife the father and son use on the boat.The young men from next door, Peter (Brady Corbet) and Paul (Michael Pitt), show up, and their presence evolves from awkward to strange to menacing. Ann, George and Georgie find themselves in a nightmare from which they may not wake.Haneke's film is an intense experience that grows bleak and bleaker. He purposely doesn't explain anything about the villains, implying that American cinema has created its own monsters, and no amount of psychology or background can justify them.Haneke ("Cache") seems to intend to provoke both horror fans and intellectuals curious about his theories. The gaffe-seeking genre aficionado will look at Paul and Peter's white gloves and mark them off as a giveaway that proves the clueless family deserves what it gets. The deep thinker might admire Haneke's refusal to diagnose evil but scoff at the simplistic juxtaposition of opera against speed metal."Funny Games" makes some good points about what viewers want from thrillers (and why that kind of pandering is wrong), especially with its ending. It daringly breaks the fourth wall, more than once. The actors are convincing, with Watts and Pitt especially good.But does it say enough? Probably not. Still, at least it gets the conversation rolling. Rated R for terror, violence and some language.Three stars (out of five).(Contact Betsy Pickle of The Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee at www.knoxnews.com.)
'Funny Games' is more strange and bleak than funny
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