Review: Must Love Board Games

[Roger Bell_West's autoposter]

2016 short romantic comedy, dir. Travis Hedges Williams, Kacie Barnes,
Tyler Grezaffi: [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6062150/)

When Quinn meets David, she has to decide whether he is a worthy
suitor: she knows the rules, just as she knows the rules of her
favourite games. But he doesn't seem to be following them.

Yes indeed, the core plot is thoroughly hackneyed. But it's used
mostly as a skeleton on which to hang a series of board game parodies
and call-outs, including _Betrayal at House on the Hill_, _Flash Point
Fire Rescue_, _Pandemic Legacy_ and _Settlers of Catan_.

One doesn't need to know the games to enjoy the film, though that's
obviously its primary selling point: popular games tend to use
easily-understood scenarios ("you're in a scary house, and one of you
is a secret enemy"; "you're heroic researchers trying to stop the
spread of a modern Black Death"), and it's clear what's going on even
if you're missing some of the in-jokes.

The cast is small and the acting is decent, particularly from the two
leads; like most romantic comedies the viewpoint is primarily on the
woman's side, but David isn't the usual bland patient perfection that
this sort of thing can fall into, Quinn recognises and fixes her own
faults rather than just bumbling along waiting for a man-shaped reward
to fall into her lap, and both actors portray these subtleties
effectively in ways that go beyond merely delivering the lines in a
convincing manner.

This is not world-shaking filmmaking, but it is freer of horrible
mis-steps than most major releases, and I'd have been happy to spend
more time with these people. The full film is available on
[youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ff9zbFCnTjs), as is a
[blooper reel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F2FvfVZ8WY).

https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2016/12/Must_Love_Board_Games.html