SHIGEYUKI, the main character of the film, is going to take entrance examinations to enter high school. This is the family's main concern at the present time.
His brother has passed the examination and entered Seibu High school, a top class high school, thus earning much praise from his parents. The father is a businessman, working as a manager in a neon-sign company. His routine is to come home from work, and get drunk. The mother is a simple housewife, who believes her task is to provide a good home for her children and also to feed the father health foods.
One day, YOSHIMOTO, a student at a third class college, comes to the home to be SHIGEYUKI's home tutor. YOSHIMOTO has been offered a bonus if he can raise SHIGEYUKI's grade. He is a peculiar young man and rather effeminate...
The tutor is a strict disciplinarian with Spartan principles. He never gives SHIGEYUKI a break or any sympathy. However, through his influence, not only SHIGEYUKI, but the whole family undergoes several changes. Conversations and the general atmosphere of the house become more and more peculiar. But, SHIGEYUKI's grades jump and he is able to get even with his antagonists at school.
The day comes when SHIGEYUKI must decide which high school he will try to enter. After much confusion SHIGEYUKI takes the examination for Seibu High School, which is not where he wanted to go originally.
As it turns out, he is successful in entering that high school and a party is given to celebrate. It is at the party, where the tutor, YOSHIMOTO, suddenly disappears, leaving the house a shambles.
SHIGEYUKI starts high school life and everything in the family slowly begins to slip back to the way it used to be. Everything is as it should be or is it?

Notes:
One of the major concerns of an ordinary Japanese family today is the school entrance examinations children have to undergo. Admission to a good high school boasting the high passing rate on the entrance examinations to top-ranked universities is presumed to mean a bright future. Thus, in often cases, parents get more frantic than children themselves who actually have to take entrance examinations, and hire a private tutor for them or send them to cramming schools. But, such imposition from parents becomes a torture to less academically gifted children, who grows the feelings of resentment that may trigger a great family tragedy.
While getting a hint from the so-called 'examination hell', "The Family Game" does not take up this educational rat-race situation as a grave serious matter. Instead, the film has been made into a unique comedy brilliantly focusing on the numerous laughs an eccentric tutor brings in the ordinary household. Especially, the highly acclaimed meal scene in which all the family members eat sitting in a row at one side of a table proves the unique sense and originality of MORITA YOSHIMITSU, a director of great promise in his early 30's.