Movie Reaction: Free Guy

Formula: (Ready Player One + Pleasantville) / Wreck-It Ralph

 

Video game movies are a fascinating conundrum. It's sort of letting the invaders behind the gate. The immersive video game experience is the thing most likely to kill the movie industry. The size of the video game industry dwarfs the movie industry at this point. The idea seems to be that video games are popular, so figuring out a video game movie would be super popular. The trouble is that video games and movies are completely different experiences. As much as games are written by talented people, the author of a video game experience is the player. Someone can play a game however they want but they can only watch a movie one way*. And video game movies (not game adaptations: that's a discussion for another day) also have the challenge of easily conveying a game that people would actually want to play. Given the number of games that I've quit because I don't want to deal with a 15+ minute tutorial or feeling-out period, that's quite a task. The Jumanji sequels side-step it by making the fact that it's a game pretty secondary. Wreck-It Ralph keeps the game pretty simple. Free Guy addresses this cleverly by using a Non-Playable Character as the starting point.

 

*Although I love a good novelty like the Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay "Dude, choose the movie" feature.

 

You see, Free Guy is about Guy (Ryan Reynolds). He's an NPC in an online game called Free City. I'll spare you the details - the plot is actually quite complex/convoluted - but his pleasantly repetitive life is upended when he meets a player named Molotov Girl controlled by a human named Millie (Jodie Comer). As a result, he breaks from his character and starts an in-game evolution that goes against the wishes of the game's "creator" Antwan (Taika Waititi). There's a lot more to it, including game rights and artificial intelligence that I simply can't cover in a paragraph or two. Ultimately though, Antwan is going to shut Free City down, and Guy, with the help of Millie and her old coding partner, Keys (Joe Keery), must find a way to stop him.

 

While this will most often be compared to similar video game movies like Wreck-It Ralph, I thought of Pleasantville the most while watching this in the way that Guy and other characters are knocked out of their monotonous existence and metaphorically see color for the first time. There's even the question of how much you can invest in these characters who are explicitly not real. Ultimately, I found that aspect of the movie to be pretty muddled. There's a reason why no one has cracked the code to make a masterpiece movie set in a video game. It's incredibly hard. Free Guy repeatedly has to find ways to shrink the movie's scale: include the same NPC, stick to the same areas, interconnect all the real-life characters, and even go to the servers themselves. It's a bigger concept than the movie, or any movie, can handle. It does the best it can though.

 

Free Guy is a comedy first and foremost, and Ryan Reynolds is just the right guy for it. He's built like a video game hero. He's almost incapable of delivering dialogue that's not landing a punchline. And he can play doe-eyed wonder well. It must be a refreshing change of pace for Reynolds after Deadeye to play someone so genuinely nice. Guy is a good guy. After shows like Parks and Rec, Schitt's Creek, and Ted Lasso made nice look cool and funny, it's about time movies try it. Free Guy definitely comes from that same ethos. Jodie Comer is good as the more cynical lead of the movie. It's a nice way to get out of the Killing Eve shadow without completely abandoning it. Molotov Girl has plenty of Villanelle in her, but Millie is decidedly more normal. It definitely won't be as much of a shock now when she undoubtedly shows up in a RomCom with a Rafe Spall in a couple years. Taika Waititi has fun playing a complete tool. It's not a nuanced character, but Waititi is funny enough. That's all that matters. Joe Keery is a nice counter-point to Comer. It's similarly nice seeing him out of Stranger Things. Lil Rel Howery turns out to be the heart of the movie. He gets a scene with Reynolds that is oddly similar to one of my favorite scenes in Stranger Than Fiction (the "Space Camp" scene). And the movie has no shortage of cameos. Some are obvious. Some are hidden. Reynolds and director Shawn Levy clearly have a roster of friends willing to shoot a cameo for a few hours or days.

 

Free Guy is a lot of fun. There's enough understanding of video game culture to make fun of it effectively in the movie. Don't look too closely though. Most of the movie isn't intended for close scrutiny. For example, I'm not that convinced that Free City would be fun to play. The video game effects look OK. The movie doesn't rely too much on them, so there isn't much danger of that aging the movie poorly. They certainly have some fun with Fox's access now to Disney properties. For how many times the trailer for this was recut, I was very worried about how good the movie would actually be. It turns out it's perfectly enjoyable despite its imperfections.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

 

 

After the Credits

Am I the only one who had trouble nailing down the ages of the actors in this? Reynolds always looks young. Waititi has grey but likes playing characters that have a younger swagger. Comer always seems older than she is, because she plays against much older actors on Killing Eve. She's actually younger than Keery, who is famous for playing a teen on Stranger Things. Lil Rel Howery doesn't seem 40 either. This isn't Black Widow or Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again mind-bending. I just noticed that I had to second guess myself about how old all of the actors were.