Family Pack

Rated TV-14 • Netflix

Tron and Jumanji number among the most memorable movies featuring characters who find themselves transported into a game world. Family Pack, a new French film based on the social card game Les Loups-garous de Thiercelieux (The Werewolves of Miller’s Hollow), doesn’t have these classic films’ charisma by a long shot. In fact, the emphasis on virtue signaling at the expense of humor results in a bland story.

In the card game, which is similar to Coup and Mafia, each player is secretly assigned a role—hunter, sheriff, villager, werewolf, and so on. Some have special powers. Werewolves try to kill villagers, and villagers search out the werewolves to kill them. Gilbert (Jean Reno) is playing Loups-garous with his son Jérôme (Franck Dubosc), daughter-in-law Marie (Suzanne Clément), and three grandchildren when the game suddenly comes to life, whisking the family away to a medieval French village in the year 1497. They determine they must kill four werewolves terrorizing the village in order to win the game and return home. Young Louise (Alizée Caugnies), nicknamed Loulou (loup, silent p, is the French word for wolf), fears she may turn into a hairy beast.

Family Pack does occasionally tickle the funny bone with deadpan humor. For example, after the executioner’s ax head flies off, he responds to the perturbed sheriff, “We’re out here executing every day. Of course, equipment’s gonna wear down.” In the film’s only laugh-out-loud scene, an arrow injury produces an absurd Monty Python–like situation. Foul language and sensuality are minimal, although a few frightening images might not be suitable for younger children.

But instead of milking humor from the situation—for example, the clash between the different eras’ technology—the film lampoons traditional family values. The village’s men and women speak of domestic abuse as normal and needful, the intent evidently to malign old-fashioned ways of life. The film sends a mixed message, however, by playing “wife beating” dialogue for laughs. In a rare serious moment, Marie gives a rousing speech as she’s tied to the stake. She tells the women onlookers that the future holds the promise of the right to divorce. Jérôme repeatedly fends off—but sort of encourages, too—the homosexual advances of the village artist. And the son’s thief power allows him to steal and change identities, leading to the inevitable line about it being OK to identify however you choose.

The card game would be the better option for family fun.