Free Guy 2021

In the past, I found Ryan Reynolds and comedy to be a mismatched combination. Reynolds had tried his hand at various roles and genres without much success. However, his portrayal of Deadpool changed that and led to a more successful career for him. In Free Guy, Reynolds plays the character Guy, an NPC in a popular online game who starts to gain self-awareness and rebels against his programming when he meets a player named Molotov Girl (played by Comer). The game's developer, Antwan (Waititi) tries to stop Guy's rebellion. The movie is entertaining and has heart, but it lacks the comedic punch one would expect from a Reynolds-led film. While there are funny moments, the film doesn't evoke much laughter. The chemistry between Reynolds and Comer is good, and Lil Rey Howery provides some emotional depth to the story. The movie also features well-executed action sequences, cameos, and clever thematic ideas about existence and free will. While not as funny as I had hoped, Free Guy is a fun and well-executed movie with strong performances.

En el pasado, descubrí que Ryan Reynolds y la comedia eran una combinación que no coincidía. Reynolds había probado suerte en varios roles y géneros sin mucho éxito. Sin embargo, su interpretación de Deadpool cambió eso y lo llevó a una carrera más exitosa. En Free Guy, Reynolds interpreta al personaje Guy, un NPC en un popular juego en línea que comienza a ganar conciencia de sí mismo y se rebela contra su programación cuando conoce a un jugador llamado Molotov Girl (interpretado por Comer). El desarrollador del juego, Antwan (Waititi) intenta detener la rebelión de Guy. La película es entretenida y tiene corazón, pero carece del golpe cómico que uno esperaría de una película dirigida por Reynolds. Si bien hay momentos divertidos, la película no provoca muchas risas. La química entre Reynolds y Comer es buena, y Lil Rey Howery proporciona algo de profundidad emocional a la historia. La película también presenta secuencias de acción bien ejecutadas, cameos e ingeniosas ideas temáticas sobre la existencia y el libre albedrío. Si bien no es tan divertido como esperaba, Free Guy es una película divertida y bien ejecutada con buenas actuaciones.

This one's for anyone who wonders what happens to incidental characters after the explosions peter out and the protagonist moves on to his next big adventure. Ryan Reynolds plays a bank teller in a Grand Theft Auto-inspired online shooter, perfectly happy to grovel and hand over the cash six times a day, until he dons a pair of special sunglasses which reveal the secret power-ups and meta games that were previously inaccessible to non-player types.

This, of course, shakes him to the core and forces him to question other habits and perceptions. The most successful bits all come when he's exploring that new freedom, fighting his programming to soar with the eagles while friends and acquaintances on the ground goggle in horror. Little slices of silly, no-consequence risk taking (a string of deaths reminiscent of Bill Murray in Groundhog Day), light jabs at the recurring server / player glitches familiar to any experienced gamer, swipes at the self-aggrandizing types who develop and maintain such digital realms... the targets are easy, but at least they're hit.

As everything condenses in the pursuit of a larger narrative, though, it comes up empty. Increasingly frequent shifts into "the real world" are dull and meandering, overstuffed with annoying stereotypes and centered around a vague plot device that falls apart under scrutiny. The timing was right to get serious - after an hour of light gamer comedy, I'd reached my limit - but this stuff is half-baked at best. Dumb and patronizing at worst. I groaned when all the Twitch streamers dropped in for key reaction cameos during the climax. Without Reynolds around to make the in-game scenes work, this would be terrible.

One word for this film and that is disappointing.......honestly I don't know why I was expecting more and Free Guy just didn't deliver as the first half was fairly slow and then the second half felt like a different film that I did start to really enjoy. The story revolves around Ryan Reynolds (Guy) who is a video game character that suddenly starts to learn by himself and play the game he is in himself with him being inspired by real-life character Jodie Comer (Millie Rusk).

But what makes this film a little boring is a real-world stuff and what saves that part is the addition of Taika Waititi (Antwan Hovachelik) who knows how to have fun with ridiculous characters and knows when not to make a film too seriously, which this film does for some weird reason. And I have to say I think I am a bit tired of Ryan Reynolds just playing himself, with Deadpool it was creative but with this, it's literally that character but a bit boring.

What makes the second half better can be put down to it actually getting a little intense but you can definitely tell that was also when Disney took over the production a bit and usually I hate that, but in this film, it really helped big time.

I have to say though if you want to watch a much better version of this film that is fun but with an amazing story, just watch Ready Player One. Otherwise, this film is fun but super forgettable and a little played out / boring.

Free Guy is not original, take a few steps back and you are looking at a mangled version of Wreck-It-Ralph, which was funnier and more entertaining, and with a loose thread you can trace back to Blade Runner, the awful I Robot, A.I. and even Lars and the Real Girl, all of which go back further to the sculpture and statue coming to life and indeed love, Pygmalion. Okay it is tenuous but boil the meat off the bones and you have the story of something inanimate, created by the protagonist, coming to life and learning to live, love, hate and all points in between. Is the ‘statue’ really alive, is Free Guy really alive? That is the story, the trick is what you do with that story, how you package it and give it your own twists.

The initial setup with Ryan Reynolds and his friend – the problems that throws up with the storyline are brushed over so I will brush over too – Buddy, played with charming likeableness by Lil Rel Howery, sets the story up and sets it up well. It is amusing and shows the life of the NPCs to some effect. The real problems start when the ‘player’ of Molotov Girl, played by the latest British star to catch the evil eye of Hollywood, Jodie Cromer, sashays her way onto the screen. Guy is immediately affected by her she is the one.

Perhaps it was just me but there was no chemistry between Cromer and Reynolds at all on the screen, nothing. I just could not see his bland character falling for her even blander character, they were strictly 'pass by in the street characters' with ne’er a glance back. But we are being set up for an unlikely computer character love match with a ‘real person’ – interesting perhaps but how do you get yourself out of this?

The answer is double up with another chemistry-free love-interest, so it is a love triangle between three people none of which you believe even looked like they would be friends, yup, it is Walter ‘Keys’ McKee played by Joe Keery, who unfortunately was not believable as love-interest or a game genius, but he tried hard.

The film runs with two stories side by side in-game and real-world, neither is sufficiently interesting or believable enough to keep your attention. True there are some fun moments, some truly impressive screen effects but these alone do not make a great, or even good, film.

The biggest problem for me is the casting. All the main cast are reasonable actors with decent work behind them but in this film it did not work. Cromer and Keery come straight off the back of hugely popular television shows but for crying out loud that is not a reason to cast someone, well it is if you want to make money and get bums on seats, but they must fit together and in this film they do not. Reynolds, Cromer and Keery have no chemistry between them – they are inert. The star, Ryan Reynolds, like a lot of ‘stars’ in Hollywood seems to get by playing the same character in every movie, in this one he is the harmless version, in Deadpool, he is the harmful version, but it is the same character. Deadpool is much a better version, so perhaps a violent, nasty, foul-mouthed Ryan Reynolds is better.

For a film where one of the characters is a computer-generated, bland, one-dimensional NPC it takes some skill to make the most seemingly computer-generated, bland, one-dimensional character a human being in the real world. Taika Waititi chews the scenery with obvious delight, clearly thinks everyone is having as much fun as he is, and straight from the Steven Segal school of acting his motivation is ‘evil’. That is it, his character, Antwan, the source-code stealing, owner of Soonami is evil, nothing else just mean and evil. Fair enough.

Despite the effects, the video game tropes and nods, after a while your attention starts to wander, only the introduction of the monstrous 6-foot 7-inch Aaron W Reed as a sort of ‘super-Free-Guy’ brings you attention back online, here there is some funny moments.

The story peters out to a huge lame ending that makes no sense, even within this film’s world, and everything is neatly tied up in a bow. People generally liked this film, but I cannot understand why they have not seen this all before, but better, more interesting and entertaining. It was so boilerplate I could see the rivets.

The acting ranged from quite poor, Waititi, conventional Utkarsh Ambudkar as Keys’ boss(?) who at least has a sort of arc, to bland, Comer and Keery. The effects are good and impressive but the storyline, screenplay is a bit…well crap. I am not big gamer, but I do play games, and a question I kept asking was what the heck game was Free City? I think the people involved in making the film think that open-world means starting a game and doing whatever you want to for hours on end, and whilst in these games you can do that, there is usually a mission, a purpose, and in video gaming you get killed by NPCs and tricky situations. It appeared nobody in Free City did, they just logged on, killed and destroyed things, collected winnables and did this for hours on end. This game would not last. The less said about Keys and Millie’s ‘game’ the better.

Free Guy used the same vision of video gamers that every TV show and film uses, all useless nerds that live with their parents, it is lazy and clearly not true, but heck it is easy and everyone will think it is funny. As a film it does not understand the media it is supposedly celebrating and for an industry that is fun, bring enjoyment to a lot of people and generates money and work, it made video game seem dull and derivative.

That is some achievement.

Watch any other inanimate creation imbued with life film, in fact I recommend the other Ryan, Ryan Gosling in Lars and the Real Girl, which is a similar story and much more entertaining, and it will make you think. Free Guy is designed to do the opposite.

The story of this movie is a pretty cool idea but unfortunately it is somewhat ruined by Disney’s woke brigade.

I have to say that I quite enjoyed the first third of this movie even though said woke brigade managed to throw in some woke unnecessary bullshit about “white privilege” quite early but from there it went rather downhill.

The first third had plenty of over the top hilarious action in it. It was fun to watch. The parts where Free Guy learns to “level up” and kick ass where quite cool.

From there on it started to go downhill. The idea that Millie should access some “hidden level” in the game to reveal evidence that Antwan had stolen code from her is rather ludicrous.

Speaking of Antwan, can you say “over the top”? Sometimes over the top can be fun but this guy was just cringey.

Although there were still plenty of cool CGI effects in the latter half of the movie it was pretty much ruined for me by several completely unnecessary strongly sexual scenes. I do not need some guy touching another guys “boobs” in my films and I do not need any boob touching at all in a movie for all audiences. Overall, at this point the movie becomes more an attempt at social engineering, propaganda and agenda feeding.

The ending? It was, not very surprisingly at this point, rather meh. To me the movie more or less ended when Millie’s original level was found. The rest was just dragging it out with some rubbish about being able to do whatever you wanted and nonsense about there being so many people not wanting to actual play a game (shooter) but just mill around and watch. Sorry, people wants to play games, if not to shoot things (which most people actually wants to do) so at least to do something. Not just to watch.

Also the rubbish with Antwan trashing servers to hide evidence? The usual Hollywood nonsense. No way anyone, even a game studio, running a game or service that big would not have back-ups.

Too bad, it was a good idea and some parts where really cool and fun to watch but their woke brigade and Hollywood script writer’s stupidity.

It was fine. Definitely some interesting concepts and potential, but it all falls by the wayside pretty fast.

The thing that bothered me the most though was all the unrealistic technical stuff. Yeah, I know, Hollywood gonna Hollywood, but when it forms the crux of the plot, it really ruins it for me. e.g.

- There's no reason for a dev/support to go in-game to kick a player from the server. They would have tools to kick people without going into the game.
- Rebooting the server wouldn't in itself reset everything, you would need to do some sort of rollback for that.
- Destroying a bunch of servers in Soonami HQ's basement wouldn't take the game offline; if the company and game are as big as the movie makes out, they would need to have servers in multiple regions.
- The fact that the evidence they need to take down Antwan is a clip recorded by some chronically-online Twitch streamer means that there's a 99.9% chance that there's another copy of it just sitting on the internet that Millie could have downloaded without any hassle.

Also, the cameos especially the gamers/streamers really made me cringe. I think I must be old now, and this movie's fan service is aimed at the generation after me.

I would never play Free City if it were a real game. I mean, who would play a game where every avatar had to wear sunglasses by default?

As illogical as Free City would be as an actual online multiplayer game, it works very well from a story perspective, moreso than almost any other world in a video game movie. Story and character moments happen all over the game world, cementing them as important and making them stand out. Some of the characters act cheesy, and yes, a lot of the video game lingo they use can be a bit cringey, but I get where they're coming from. This movie has to satisfy both casual moviegoers, as well as those who know video games like the backs of their hands. There's almost no way they can cater to one audience without alienating the other, but I think Free Guy does a good job balancing the two. It's accessible, but also rewarding for gamers.

I didn't have a good time watching this movie... I had a great time. I really liked that the real story had its roots in the "real world", like a reverse Ready Player One. It made it feel more grounded, in a way. And even though there's a sincere, honest story about a ripped-off video game developer at its core, it doesn't take itself too seriously. At all. And that's what sets movies like Free Guy apart from other video game movies (or, video game-adjacent, I suppose): it just has fun with the world, the characters, the scenarios. This movie has more heart while it's being insincere than any other video game movie has in any given frame.

Maybe it's Ryan Reynolds? It might just be Ryan Reynolds. Who can say?