There are plenty of elements that almost instantly categorize the German comedy “Blame the Game” as a farce.

It’s got a large ensemble, mostly people who know each other, gathering for a group board and card game night. Some take being “game nerds” a lot more seriously than others. A new couple is threatened when the host invites the exes of one of those guests. The ex is a rich, bullying dentist. The host couple is an imbalanced marriage. One character is an on-the-spectrum, blurt-out-every-thought type and another is the last to realize that her lover is not just “on a break” but on a permanent one.

There’s a “hidden” and cute Latina maid who secretly does all the work, a white cockatoo named “Helmut Kohl” that gets loose, a wacky friend summoned to retrieve it, a trigger happy/booby-trap loving neighbor, the games are “fixed” to someone’s advantage and it’ll all come to a head in naked ping pong bout.

The pratfalls and hinjinks kind of write themselves, right?

Not exactly. Pacing counts for everything in a farce, and while this one has a promising bit, here and there, it’s something of a stiff. It never gets on its feet and sprints.

Jan (Dennis Mojen) meets and flirts with Pia (Janina Uhse) at the dog park. She’s a college educated photographer and he’s a high school drop-out bike shop owner. Those differences don’t become an issue until she invites him to game night in the posh suburban mansions in the Grunevald neighborhood.

Jan figures a Youtube tutorial on how to play “Monopoly” is all he needs in a “What could go wrong?” sense. But warnings from his bike shop partner Alex (Edin Hasanovic) that “No one ‘chill’ lives in Grunevald are quickly borne out.

Hostess Karo (Anna Maria Mühe) is unimpressed with his guest’s gift. Upper class fop/nerd Kurt (Maximilian Meyer-Bretschneider) says every quiet embarassing thing out loud and co-host Oliver (Axel Stein) has invited Pia’s boorish ex, who proceeds to give her the full-court-press to try and win her back.

He dominates the games and uses every chance to ridicule under-educated Jan as a “Loser.” Jan, out of his element, can’t seem to do anything right. He’s he’s accidentally let loose Oliver’s beloved cockatoo, stumbled into the fetching au pair/housekeeper (Alfonsina Bencosme) and Jan and hapless cockatoo-hunting friend Alex have met the “crazy” gun-toting neighbor (Bernd Hölscher).

There’s enough going on that you’d think this Marco Petry film (scripted by Claudius Pläging and Andrej Sorin) would spin it into something that gets up a head of steam.

But that never happens. The booby traps are “Three Stooges” vintage, the put-downs aren’t clever and the naked ping pong elicits a grin, but pretty much dies of loneliness. None of the ex regaling one and all about trips he and Pia went on, Oliver setting off a slide show of photos of such trips and the “great sex” they had accounts add up to a single laugh. It’s just mean and provocative.

As the provocations yield only the mildest clapbacks and as the various comic elements stroll, ever so slowly by, you remember that the only way any of these well-worn situations and character types ever delivered laughs was when they pass by in a blur.

No 92 minute film should feel this slow.

Rating: TV-MA, sex, nudity

Cast: Dennis Mojen, Janina Uhse, Anna Maria Mühe, Axel Stein, Taneshia Abt and Edin Hasanovic

Credits: Directed by Marco Petry, scripted by Claudius Pläging and Andrej Sorin. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:32