Free Guy (2021)

Another Ryan Reynolds comedy, another film benefiting from his voiceover narration (which seems to be the best way to utilise his onscreen presence), and another film allowing him to retain his current status as someone we can all collectively love for a variety of reasons, Free Guy also stands out from the crowd nowadays, much like the worthwhile Ted Lasso, by simply celebrating the benefits of being good. It celebrates the ability to be a nice person, even as the world around you tries to make you feel like a weakling for showing even a hint of kindness at times.

Reynolds plays Guy, a NPC in a videogame that doesn’t feel a million miles removed from Grand Theft Auto. The videogame may have been built using code created by Millie (Jodie Comer) and Keys (Joe Keery), and Millie spends as much time as possible within the game trying to find any sign of their old code, in an attempt to sue the rich and powerful head of Soonami Studios, Antwan. Guy has spent a lot of time just enjoying his days, working in a bank that is often robbed, and enjoying the company of his best friend, Buddy (Lil Rel Howery), but spying Millie AKA the woman he loves spurs him to take on a very different persona. Guy starts to level up, and he does it by doing good deeds, as opposed to the approach of robbing and shooting stuff that most players opt for.

Written by Matt Lieberman and Zak Penn (a great mix of family-friendly tone from the former throughout and the layered, referential, work that the latter has done a few times before), a lot of people have been busy finding comparisons between this movie and the likes of TRON and Ready Player One. While I can see those comparisons, Free Guy is actually more of a mix of The LEGO Movie and Wreck-It Ralph, with a hint of They Live in there (Guy sees the missions and extras around him when he puts on sunglasses that are usually only worn by player characters).

Director Shawn Levy is a dependable pair of hands, working with a team to create an interpretation of an online gaming world that crams in plenty of fun, in terms of the characters, the dialogue, and overall design of every scene. This is a film that will reward a number of repeat viewings, and Levy maintains a nice balance between the deceptively simple heart of the whole thing and the cavalcade of wonderful details throughout.

Reynolds is excellent in the lead role, very likeable and dialling down his standard smart-ass sassiness. Comer pairs up with him perfectly, being a skilled and tough woman always moving forward with a very specific aim. The chemistry between the two leads is almost perfect, all the way to a finale that manages to pull off what I thought was going to be the biggest hurdle, a truly satisfying ending. Keery gives good support, eventually helping Comer when he sees her getting tantalisingly close to finding the code, and Utkarsh Ambudkar is a lot of fun as Kerry’s colleague/friend who keeps trying to advise him to not rock the boat. Howery is wonderfully exuberant and sweet, Channing Tatum has a fun cameo role (and there are a few others to keep your eyes/ears peeled for), and Waititi seems to relish playing his douchebag character at a level of maximum douchebaggery.

The only thing working against Free Guy is a sense of familiarity as the videogame tropes are set up and played around with. But that’s not enough to drag it down much. As things stand, this is so far the best big cinema release of 2021, and I recommend it to pretty much everyone, but especially those who enjoy the two main animated movies that I mentioned earlier.

9/10

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Ready Player One (2018)

I had a lot of fun when I read the book of Ready Player One (written by Ernest Cline, who also worked on the screenplay to this movie with Zak Penn) but I didn't rate it as a GOOD piece of writing. If asked to describe it by anyone, or if I decided that I should discuss it with other people, I mentioned the style of American Psycho, but instead of lots of brand names and designer labels it was overstuffed with pop culture references, mostly from the 1980s.

When I started to hear about Steven Spielberg directing the movie version of the movie, I had an optimistic view of what we might get. Spielberg knows that world. He gave us a hell of a lot of it. And he has proven, on more than one occasion, that he can take a flawed novel and pare away the worst parts to give us a real cinematic treat.

I bought my ticket, I bought my treats, and I eagerly waited to be transported to a world full of recognisable characters, moments, and cinephile-friendly easter eggs.

Basically, I got what I wanted. Sometimes.

Sadly, the film isn't the improvement on the book that I hoped it would be. It works in some ways (the casting of the main "baddie" being a big plus point, for example) and then falls down in other ways.

The basic plot, for those still unaware, is as follows. Most people spend their days living in a virtual world called the OASIS. You can do anything you want, and also build up kudos and credit that could help you in the real world. The creator of the OASIS left a number of easter eggs in the world, revealing in a video that automatically played to everyone after his death that the person to find three hidden keys would become the owner of the OASIS, which would make them the most envied individual on the planet. Tye Sheridan is Wade, who spends his time in the OASIS as Parzival, and he thinks he has what it takes to win. He also doesn't mind helping a girl that he is quite taken with, Art3mis (AKA Samantha in the real world, played by Olivia Cooke), and his best friend, Aech. But as they start to make progress on their quest, corporate bad guy Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) becomes more determined to put a stop to them, either in the OASIS or by dealing with them outside the relative safety of virtual reality.

Almost every aspect of Ready Player One has both good and bad aspects to it. Sheridan is a disappointingly bland lead, but that's okay when you get more of his scenes featuring Cooke. Mendehlson and T. J. Miller are both very good, but I can't say the same for Mark Rylance and Simon Pegg, which is very unusual for the former. And Lena Waithe, Philip Zhao, and Win Morasaki do fine, but aren't half as memorable as the hordes of CGI cameos worth keeping your eyes peeled for (which I understand is almost the driving force for the whole thing anyway).

The script does well at explaining ideas and plot points, it doesn't do so well at giving the characters any decent dialogue in between explaining ideas and plot points.

The visuals are impressive, as you'd expect, but most scenes are far too busy, either with the ongoing action or the multitude of easter eggs. What I expected to be fun onscreen actually ends up quickly becoming quite tiresome and irritating. I may change my mind when able to view the film at home and rewind certain moments, and it at least improves things structurally compared to the sloppiness of the source material, but this is very much a dual-layered experience. As an actual piece of cinema it's a hot mess, yet as a hot mess it's kind of easy to pick and choose various moments to enjoy.

Even the soundtrack falters. The score by Alan Silvestri isn't very memorable and the pop hits used throughout are just background noise when they could have been lined up with better moments to create some movie magic. Hell, the film starts with Van Halen's "Jump" blasting and then just fades it out as you get the initial info dump. High energy potential is just left to sizzle and dry up.

This should have been a home run for Spielberg. He's been back on excellent form over the past few years, he's comfortable working with all of the new industray toys, and movie nerdiness is in his blood. The fact that it isn't proves how hard it must have been to translate the story to screen. So perhaps we should just be glad that this project fell to him, rather than someone who could have made it so much worse.

6/10

The Blu-ray will be available here.
Americans can pick it up here.

Avengers Assemble (2012)

And so it appears at last (albeit with an annoying title change so that we easily confused Brits don't think Steed and Emma Peel are coming back to the big screen this year), the  film that looks set to be the mightiest of superhero movies, the royal rumble of the Marvel cinematic universe, the geekgasm for comic book fans. With Joss Whedon directing (and co-writing the script with Zak Penn), Avengers Assemble actually manages to be all of this and more.

For anyone adjusting to the sunlight and the sights around them after coming out of some decade-long hibernation, here is the plot. Loki (Tom Hiddleston), last seen causing major trouble for Thor (Chris Hemsworth), has managed to get himself to Earth with a device that can run on self-sustaining energy and grow more and more powerful. Loki hopes to use this device to bring a warring alien race to Earth, cause mayhem and chaos, and then lord it over all he surveys. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) really doesn't want this to happen so he enlists the help of the superheroes that he knows and thinks up to the task. Captain America (Chris Evans), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor, Dr. Bruce Banner/The Incredible Hulk (played by Mark Ruffalo in both forms), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and, hopefully, Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner). The biggest problem is that these characters don't play well together, something that Loki soon realises as he puts strain upon strain on their relationships (even completely taking over one or two characters to do his bidding). There's also the ever-dependable Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) and Agent Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders).

Most of the cast here have already grown into their characters in a previous movie (with Robert Downey Jr. perfecting his great patter in two enjoyable Iron Man films) but viewers may be most surprised to find that the person who comes near to stealing every scene here is Mark Ruffalo, arguably the best onscreen interpretation yet of the man who fears his own uncontrollable strength and rage. In a script full of great one-liners he also comes close to bagging two of the top five spots (though the absolutely greatest retort comes from Loki in a comment so funny that the cinema audience I saw the film with was laughing hard for the next full minute). But the best, and most impressive, thing about Avengers Assemble is just how everyone gets their share of great moments without the movie feeling overlong or bloated in any way. You may go into this film with a favourite that you're looking forward to seeing but I guarantee that you come out of it loving the entire group and struggling to pick an outright favourite moment. Which all goes to show just how much praise Tom Hiddleston also deserves for making Loki such a memorable and worthy villain, a perfect mix of camp and menace and scheming (his outburst to Black Widow in one particular scene ranks up there with some of the very best rants by cinematic baddies ever).

The writing is as sharp as you would expect. Okay, this isn't necessarily a film for complete newcomers (if there ARE any) but it sketches out enough details to keep most people happy and it does a great job of following major plot strands through a whole cat's cradle of different sub-strings. There are also at least four great action set-pieces, just as important to a film of this type, and the barnstorming finale features a superb mix of CGI, witticisms and sheer spectacle.

As you would expect from Whedon, he knows what fans want. I think that most people will be like myself, eager to like the film even before the opening titles come up. But with great anticipation comes, of course, the chance for great disappointment. Thankfully, there's absolutely nothing to worry about here. Whedon shows in almost every sequence that he knows just what audiences want, the action may be fast and frantic on many occasions but there are many times when the camera is pulled back and viewers are allowed to revel in a moment of sheer fan-pleasing awesomeness (be it simple joy at the scale of the action or an extended shot of Hulk having a smashing time).

2012 is already shaping up to be a great year for BIG cinematic spectacle (I am also drooling with anticipation at the thought of going to see Prometheus and The Dark Knight Rises) and Avengers Assemble has already set a very high bar for blockbuster quality. Did I want to go back and watch it again as soon as the credits rolled? Yes. Am I looking forward to reliving the whole thing on shiny disc format? Yes. Am I already very, VERY eager for a sequel? I think you know the answer to that one.

9/10

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