Base price: $12.
1 – 8 players.
Play time: ~15 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy directly!
Logged plays: 4 

Full disclosure: A review copy of Apropos: Of Movies was provided by Button Shy.

Alright, let’s keep the party rolling this week with another Button Shy review! I love these little wallet games; I take them everywhere. They’re just … super useful in a variety of contexts. It’s great. I think a lot about portability now as I’m trying to carry fewer than two dozen board games on my back in one of those massive cases, these days. But that’s probably just aging or something. Now I can carry two dozen board games in a Quiver or something. It’s delightful. But enough about that; let’s see how the game plays.

In Apropos: Of Movies, your goal is simple. You just need to name a movie. Easy, right? Well, every time you do, your movie and all other movies like it get removed from consideration. That wouldn’t be so bad, but how many movies do you know? How many have you seen? Can you survive to the fifth card? Still too easy? Add a five-minute timer to keep things spicy. There’s a lot to enjoy there, but can you get through five cards in time?

Contents

• Setup
• Gameplay
• Player Count Differences
• Strategy
• Pros, Mehs, Cons
• Overall

Setup

Pretty much none. You just place the two MUST HAVE / BUT NOT cards face up:

Shuffle the rest:

And you’re good to start!

Gameplay

Gameplay is a cinch. Once you’re ready, flip a card into the MUST HAVE column and start the five-minute timer. Any player (no turns) must name a movie that has the indicated feature. For instance, if you MUST HAVE “Explosion”, you can name literally any Michael Bay film. Armageddon. You’re welcome. Once you name a movie, flip the next card. You must place that card such that the movie you just named no longer works. This might mean placing the card under “BUT NO”, meaning it can’t have the feature on the card. If you drew the card “Cat”, well, Armageddon doesn’t have a cat as far as I can remember, so you’d place the “Cat” card under MUST HAVE, instead. Now you need a movie with a cat and an explosion, so, Captain Marvel. Continue doing this until either five minutes have passed (you lose) or you finish five cards (you win)! The game recommends then watching whatever movie you picked (or having a marathon!).

Player Count Differences

I wouldn’t say there are player count differences, just because you fundamentally play this as one mental committee trying to answer the cards as they come up. That said, having more than five players is a bit unwieldy, since players may not get to actually answer a card themselves. That might be fine for some players and not fine for others, so be mindful of that with your player group. I personally wouldn’t mind. As a result, no strong player count preference! I would probably not play solo, but that’s just because I like having other people to bounce ideas off of.

Strategy

• Know … movies? I’m not really sure what to tell you on this one. It’s a trivia party game.
• There’s something to be said for appealing to the movie the most players know, but that’s about it. Yeah, if you start picking obscure films, you’re going to have to waste time explaining why your pick fits and then building off of that will just be annoying. Try to keep it a bit more common.

Pros, Mehs, and Cons

Pros

• Cooperative trivia is fun! I haven’t tried a lot of games like this, but I like how everyone has to work together to figure it out, come up with ideas, and verify and validate each other’s picks to try and move forward together as a group.
• I really like how this creates its own complexity. It’s pretty clever, since it’s just making the game harder by making all previous answers invalid each time until you win. It’s a dead simple way to do it, and it works super well.
• Very portable, as you’d expect from a Button Shy game. I just love wallet games and how easy they are to transport anywhere.
• Very easy to learn and play as well. It’s really nothing in terms of setup and explanation; we explained it to someone and they joined our game while time was running and we still won.
• Just a generally great party game for movie buffs. I know a lot of movie people who would find this pretty entertaining. I’d love to see another one of this for movies or one for TV, personally. I need to see if I can try the Board Games one, too.
• The art is cute. I appreciate that each card features the theme indicated on it in a fun cartoony way.

Mehs

• I wish the “Expert” tag were a little more visible on the cards, or that the Expert Tag cards had non-Expert prompts on them too. We didn’t immediately notice them on the first time, and some of the Expert cards can be a doozy.
• It’s not entirely clear what “Featured” means (as in, say, Mother Featured). I usually took it to mean you remembered both the character and the actor’s name, meaning they had a fairly prominent role. It would be nice to have a bit more explicit clarification.

Cons

• The “Made After Year 2000” card makes things pretty challenging for younger players. It feels a bit arbitrary, in that regard, since plenty of them are full adults, but I feel like it would be nice if there were other year options you could swap in to make things feel a tiny bit more fair.

Overall: 8 / 10

Overall, I think Apropos: Of Movies is a solid little game! It’s a very smart little series since you can apply it to just about anything (again, would love a TV or a Video Games version, or even books, frankly). I appreciate that it works completely by just invalidating the last thing that you said, so you have to come up with a new answer every time. It’s simple and clever and works great, here. It’s also the kind of thing that you could easily bring to a bar or a restaurant or play on a car ride with friends, so, great work for Button Shy, getting another solid party game in the line. I’m usually a bit skeptical of party games, but we played this one a bunch at OrcaCon and everyone loved it. Can’t wait to see what they do next in the series. If you’re looking for a quick little party game, you’re a huge movie buff and can’t wait to show what you know, or you just enjoy Button Shy’s small wallet game ethos, I’d definitely suggest checking out Apropos: Of Movies! I’ve quite liked it.

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