Uno: The Movie quite cleverly utilizes a video game format to play with perspective. A bottle episode, the movie takes place in real-time as four faceless men play what on the surface is a simple card game. Over the course of almost three hours we learn about them and their circumstances entirely through dialogue and voice-acting as they each slowly descend into madness in what can only be a purgatorial (one of them references Sartre's No Exit) metaphor for the 2016 election.
It begins gleefully enough, a group of friends eager for a rematch of what one of them describes as "the best game ever made." Yet it quickly becomes clear that the rules they play by are an exercise in sadism and their friendly competition is immediately revealed to be the schadenfreude of systematically brutalizing one another at every opportunity. Eventually destroying each other and themselves, they devolve into grief and depression as the desire to win simply becomes the longing for it to just end at any cost.
The character of Jack/Ryan in particular was an interesting device. The quintessential family man, his children are the ticking clock that gives him the highest stake in leaving and he, predictably, is the first to crack. Within the first hour he has abandoned the notion of victory and instead becomes the unhinged antagonist. Whereas Geoff had been a fairly innocuous villain, Ryan is the deliberate anarchist, announcing his intentions of creating a 'horde bomb' in his desire just to watch it all burn. His first act arc is then subverted when he 'leaves to pick up his kids and is replaced by Jack.' Yet even with the different pitch and inflections, it is still obviously the same voice actor.
This Tyler Durden style switch allows the Jack character to openly express the underlying root of the anxiety, distress about the outcome of the election, which, much like the Hell game they've trapped themselves in, drags on with no end in sight.
By the last act they're all broken, having passed into final stages of grieving, they've called their loved ones to say they're not going to make it home. Even the energetic characters that had expressed joy in the beginning are morose and defeated. In the final round they all have abandoned hope of escape, let alone victory. They do what they can to try and bolster their best chance for any conclusion.
But in the final moments their presumptive candidate is overturned leaving Jeremy, a man who has repeatedly expressed his lack of experience and understanding of the game, a man who even in the final moments directly states that he doesn't want to win, (a man who routinely has been calling the others sluts and whores.) And yet when the final tally rolls in declaring him the champion they all release a guttural chorus of screams, not in joy, but in pure primal relief that it's finally over.
A brilliant but depressing testament, the story of a game which became an unending nightmare that left even the initiators longing for death, Uno: The Movie is an emotional roller-coaster chronicling the downfall of Man by his own hubris and folly.
It begins gleefully enough, a group of friends eager for a rematch of what one of them describes as "the best game ever made." Yet it quickly becomes clear that the rules they play by are an exercise in sadism and their friendly competition is immediately revealed to be the schadenfreude of systematically brutalizing one another at every opportunity. Eventually destroying each other and themselves, they devolve into grief and depression as the desire to win simply becomes the longing for it to just end at any cost.
The character of Jack/Ryan in particular was an interesting device. The quintessential family man, his children are the ticking clock that gives him the highest stake in leaving and he, predictably, is the first to crack. Within the first hour he has abandoned the notion of victory and instead becomes the unhinged antagonist. Whereas Geoff had been a fairly innocuous villain, Ryan is the deliberate anarchist, announcing his intentions of creating a 'horde bomb' in his desire just to watch it all burn. His first act arc is then subverted when he 'leaves to pick up his kids and is replaced by Jack.' Yet even with the different pitch and inflections, it is still obviously the same voice actor.
This Tyler Durden style switch allows the Jack character to openly express the underlying root of the anxiety, distress about the outcome of the election, which, much like the Hell game they've trapped themselves in, drags on with no end in sight.
By the last act they're all broken, having passed into final stages of grieving, they've called their loved ones to say they're not going to make it home. Even the energetic characters that had expressed joy in the beginning are morose and defeated. In the final round they all have abandoned hope of escape, let alone victory. They do what they can to try and bolster their best chance for any conclusion.
But in the final moments their presumptive candidate is overturned leaving Jeremy, a man who has repeatedly expressed his lack of experience and understanding of the game, a man who even in the final moments directly states that he doesn't want to win, (a man who routinely has been calling the others sluts and whores.) And yet when the final tally rolls in declaring him the champion they all release a guttural chorus of screams, not in joy, but in pure primal relief that it's finally over.
A brilliant but depressing testament, the story of a game which became an unending nightmare that left even the initiators longing for death, Uno: The Movie is an emotional roller-coaster chronicling the downfall of Man by his own hubris and folly.