Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
I picked up a copy of the new trick-taker Movie Tricks during my visit to SPIEL Essen 2025. It has a box cover that made at least one person in my circles wonder if the cover was generated by AI…not because of the illustrations by credited artist Eirik Belaska, but because the title, characters, explosion and car bursting out of the middle of the cover image feel so generic.
This is also to say: expectations were low for Movie Tricks. My 12-year-old thought that the game’s title was terrible, even if we all agreed that the title was pretty accurate: Movie Tricks is a trick-taking game where players take turns playing cards to the table, with each trick’s winner getting first pick of market cards that get added to their personal movie tableau.
The trick-taking is standard fare—Movie Tricks is a “must follow” game with a trump suit that may or may not change after each trick. Over the course of 10-13 tricks, players will build up their tableau to score points using a set collection mechanic (Props), a majority mechanic (Soundtracks), a simple scoring multiplier (CGI), and a slightly different set collection scoring tool with a balance component (Roles). In addition, players score based on their “Best Movie”—aligned with the highest scoring row of cards across all four categories—and points for their worst category column, pushing players to balance their slotted cards.
No matter what I’ve seen players try to do, scores usually end up close and in roughly the same place (100-120 points with three players, 80-100 points with four players), so players will likely find that they are never far out of a game but there are little touches that could elevate themselves to victory.
I did find that Movie Tricks is a nice mix of tableau building and trick-taking. With your hand of cards, you get what you get…and, players will find that in some games, being dealt a range of lower-valued cards just means you are gonna get hosed more often than not when trying to win a trick to draft market cards before your opponents. That’s fine when all the cards in the market are great…but they aren’t always great.
Beyond that, each of the game’s four categories have just enough spice to make things interesting. The race for Props is the most fun of them all, as players try to collect Props cards with 1-3 symbols on them then turn those in for a high-value scoring card tied to the number of unique Props symbols on their cards. Because each player can only take one Props scoring card per game, everyone is gunning to time their acquisition of a card at just the right moment.
The other categories felt like they just sort of happened, none more so than Roles. There are only two symbols to track here: Heroes and Villains. Collecting either symbol will add up to a player getting a bonus at the end based on the total number of icons on the cards…but, if you’re able to get an equal number of Heroes and Villains, you get an eight-point bonus. CGI is vanilla ice cream: two points per “Bang!” symbol, but an extra points bonus based on the card value of the final card in each player’s CGI tableau area.
There are fun moments; at the end of the game, everyone reads the title of their Best Movie scoring line. In one of my games, that title was “Shipwreck Invasion: Vengeful Bargain”, while another’s best title was “Samurai Man: Legendary War.” I’m not sure I would watch a movie called “Shipwreck Invasion: Vengeful Bargain”, but it was funny for a few minutes dreaming up the real-world cast members.
Each card, in addition to having a one-word title used for Best Movie, also has a real movie quote at the bottom. Many are quotes familiar to even casual movie fans, but then some are complete curveballs. There’s a quote from the movie Predator, which one would have assumed would have simply been the most famous quote from the movie: “Get to the chopper!”, spouted by Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) near the end of the movie. Second place might be “If it bleeds, we can kill it!”, although almost any of Dutch’s lines might work for most fans.
Movie Tricks takes a hard left, and uses a quote from Bill Duke’s character Mac: “I’m gonna have me some fun.” Even fans of the first Predator film might struggle to pull out the specific scene where Mac says that line, and in a game that tries to pull in some of the most famous lines from the most popular movies of the last 75 years, “I’m gonna have me some fun” would have never made the cut if I’m the one making the game.
The use of that quote was emblematic of where I landed on Movie Tricks as a game. It’s good work, but not the best work. It’s interesting, but it’s never quite right. It’s a game that never really feels like it aspires to stand out, but I had a decent time playing it. Now that I’ve wrapped up my review plays, I’m not sure I’ll ever choose to play it again.
