Review: Free Guy

Ryan Reynolds is Guy, a citizen of Free City who has a boring bank teller job and a desire to be one of the ‘Sunglasses People’ who drive fancy cars and get to be the ‘good guy’, i.e. a hero. They also get the girl, with Guy finding himself drawn to the English-accented beauty ‘Molotovgirl’. Every day has been the same for Guy, except this one day he picks up sunglasses belonging to a bank robber and putting them on it makes him view his world in a completely different way. A crush will make you do crazy things, I guess. Meanwhile, in another kind of world we meet game developers Keys (Joe Keery) and his crush/co-worker Millie (Jodie Comer) who work for greedy game mogul Antoine (Taika Waititi), who stole their A.I. technology for use in the ‘Free City’ game. Yep, Guy and his fellow ‘Free City’ citizens are video game avatars, NPCs actually (Non-playable characters) for the most part in this “Grand Theft Auto” meets “The Sims”-style game world.

 

Although reviews cite “The Truman Show” and “Wreck-it Ralph” as chief influences, this empty 2021 film from director Shawn Levy (“Big Fat Liar”, “A Night at the Museum”, “Date Night”, “The Internship”) seemed to me to be “Pleasantville” for the “Fortnite” generation. Just look at the scene where Guy tries to change his routine and none of the other characters know how to react. It’s straight out of “Pleasantville” but with a slightly slicker coat of paint, video games instead of “Leave it to Beaver”. The sunglasses thing meanwhile, is a steal from “They Live”, though sadly we don’t get a five minute brawl because Ryan Reynolds isn’t a professional wrestler. Insipidly and unoriginally scripted by Matt Lieberman (“Playing With Fire”, starring John Cena, who is/was a professional wrestler) and Zak Penn (“Last Action Hero”, “The Avengers”), with dreadful dialogue in particular; ‘Blue shirt guy’, ‘Being the good guy’, ‘sunglasses people’, etc. Jesus, put some effort in at least. I was shocked at how infantile the whole thing was given it was quite positively talked about. Perhaps being one of the few new film options during the pandemic made people a lot less discerning. I couldn’t see anyone over the age of about 13 getting anything out of this if there were better options available, and I don’t think kids were the only target market here.

 

Although I enjoyed the first two “Night at the Museum” films, I’m not surprised to find Shawn Levy’s name attached here. It’s the exact kind of kiddie-oriented (aside from some profanity), gimmicky premise he’s known for, but this time I wasn’t having it. It’s too derivative, stilted, and lame. It’s also delivered at a snail’s pace, with Guy only finding out the truth 50 minutes into a 100 minute film. The performances are hollow and stilted, with Ryan Reynolds temporarily going back to his poor man’s Jim Carrey schtick from that lame pizza sitcom he starred on years ago. The highly overrated Taika Waititi, playing the film’s villain, simply cannot act and gives a fatuous and unfunny performance. He’s not remotely menacing or credible, he’s an embarrassing tool. Current ‘It’ girl Jodie Comer gives a wooden and forced performance where she has less facial mobility than Victoria Beckham (and not just in the video game scenes). Also, strangely her real accent sounds a lot less convincing than the moments she sports an American accent. Weird.

 

An awful, empty film that offers up no originality, wit, or even decent performances. I must’ve seen a completely different film to most of you.

 

Rating: D