For a Boardroom-Date Fever Dream: A Game of Corporate Overkill

Tetris (2023)  

Dir. Jon S. Baird

Imagine gearing up for a movie night only to realize you’re about to watch a two-hour LinkedIn meeting—now with bonus 8-bit nostalgia! But if you're looking to impress a super leftist hottie or bond with someone who lives to hate on corporate nonsense, this movie makes for an ironic date night. It’s a neon-soaked exercise in romanticizing capitalism, where you’ll be giggling at the film’s desperate attempts to make business deals seem epic, pausing only to wax poetic about cassette tapes and analog tech in between eye rolls.

Henk Rogers (played by Taron Egerton, bless his overenthusiastic heart) is a video game salesman in Tokyo who stumbles upon the iconic puzzle game at a Las Vegas expo. What follows is a whirlwind adventure as Henk dives headfirst into a world of backroom negotiations, sketchy Soviet politics, and high-stakes deals to secure the rights to Tetris—the game that ruined your childhood by haunting your dreams with falling blocks. But instead of the satisfying clunk of perfectly aligned tetrominoes, we’re treated to the thud of corporate jargon falling flat.

The movie tries "so" hard to convince you that securing video game rights is as thrilling as Cold War espionage. Henk zips over to 1980s Soviet Russia, where the stakes are supposedly sky-high, but the drama feels as hollow as a badly stacked Tetris tower. If you don’t have a PhD in capitalist chess moves, good luck figuring out who’s backstabbing whom or why any of this matters.

The Russian government is portrayed with all the nuance of a Saturday morning cartoon villain. You and your Marxist date will be in stitches at the over-the-top depiction of Soviet bureaucrats, as the film cranks Cold War propaganda up to eleven. It’s the kind of absurdity that leaves you torn between cringing and laughing, so you’ll probably do both.

The subplot with Henk’s family is as empty as the values of the super-rich. We get it, Henk: you’re a workaholic with family drama. But the movie’s attempts to paint him as a hero feel flatter than a game-over screen, with his wife and kids serving as cardboard reminders that “family matters,” even when you’re too busy worshipping capitalism.

Pairing Suggestion: This movie screams for strong coffee—endless cups of it. Caffeine is technically a psychoactive drug, and you’ll need that buzz to keep your brain from dozing off during the labyrinthine corporate plot. For an added twist, sprinkle in a touch of magic mushrooms. Not enough to fully trip, but just enough to turn the desperate visuals into a psychedelic art piece, making the experience far more fun than intended.

So, does "Tetris" crack the code of making business deals thrilling? Not quite. But if you’re down for an ironic romp through '80s nostalgia and corporate ridiculousness, you might just have a memorable night—if only for all the wrong reasons.