With Self Reliance, Jake Johnson and The Lonely Island (Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, Akiva Schaffer) have made a broad comedy rendition of David Fincher’s The Game. After a bad breakup with his partner, an aimless Thomas Walcott (Johnson) jumps at the chance to play a mysterious game of life and death, to be live-streamed to the dark web. The rules are simple: Thomas must survive 30 days of being hunted by assassins from Greenland who may or may not ever find him and who cannot harm him if he is within striking distance of another person. Seeing this last part as an exploitable loophole (more of a rule than a loophole, as it were), Thomas accepts the challenge.

For the first few days, Thomas is golden. He wakes up, lazily rides a recumbent bicycle, has a few shots of whisky at a bar, and calls it a day. No sign of any “production assistant ninjas” ready to film his murder. Then, one night, a window breaks while he is sleeping and he discovers a tiny video camera. Knowing the danger is real, and with his family unwilling to believe him, Thomas hires a man he finds dumpster diving (Biff Wiff) to stay by his side at all times. He is also contacted by a person claiming to be a participant in the game (Anna Kendrick).

The metaphor behind the game is fairly obvious, and if it isn’t at first, Johnson speaks it out loud midway through the movie. But the idea of finding the impetus to move on from the pitfalls life throws at you by being forced to remain close to a person in a similar situation to you makes for a sweet, mildly amusing time. Johnson and Kendrick are good together in the surprisingly little screentime they actually share.

On the flip side, the laughs in this comedy are few and far between, with the jokes mostly hinging on meta-textual recognition of the script’s own pop culture references. Biff Wiff (recognizable from some memorable sketches in Tim Robinson’s I Think You Should Leave) lifts the comedy bar a bit. But the film struggles to rise beyond being pleasant yet forgettable.

Further, the construction of an elaborate alternate-reality game feels more piece-meal and less carefully considered when compared to the movies this one is inspired by. There are clever moments, both visually and narratively, especially considering this is Johnson’s directorial debut, but Self Reliance is a few pieces shy of being a cohesive comedy.

Self Reliance: C

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As always, thanks for reading!

—Alex Brannan (Letterboxd, Facebook)