Guy donning a pair of avatar sunglasses and seeing his familiar world newly bursting with available cash prizes and awesome weaponry and, as the screen shows us, “subtle product placement.” Avatars of less capable gamers manically jumping in place or attempting to climb un-climbable walls. Levy's film wasn't even a half-hour old before I lost track of how many set pieces and random throwaways floored me with their cleverness and invention, and man alive, they just kept comin'. Watching Free Guy, you start to believe that anything is. (Commentary on the escalating lunacy is provided by actual video-game streamers including Jacksepticeye, Ninja, and Pokimane … all of whose presences will undeniably mean more to others than they did to me.) Guy is Truman Burbank, he's George Bailey, he's Ted Lasso – he's the one who makes you feel anything is possible. Reynolds is unfailingly winning here, with Guy so jazzed by the prospect of life beyond the norm that he can't help but win over (most) everyone in his orbit, among them the real-life Free City players who don't understand how this background figure has suddenly become the game's biggest draw. Yet the tone remains exceptionally lighthearted, as if Levy's movie were taking its cue from the unremitting sunniness of its star. ![]() The movie is video-gamey in the way of Ready Player One and (ugh) Hardcore Henry cartoonishly violent in the manner of Looney Tunes' “Duck Season/Rabbit Season” short apocalyptic in the style of nearly every comic-book adventure ever. There's the “same day every day” element familiar from Groundhog Day and Palm Springs and Russian Doll, as well as the “your world is not what you think” scenario from The Maxtrix and The Truman Show. To discuss screenwriters Matt Lieberman's and Zak Penn's plot in detail is to risk making it sound nonsensical, and also to risk making it sound like an unwieldy mishmash of at least a dozen other movies and TV series. And then things start getting really complicated. The film consequently finds Millie entering the game as her avatar “Molotov Girl” in order to find proof of Antwan's larceny, while Guy finds himself acting in increasingly uncharacteristic fashion after falling instantly in love with his city's new visitor. In our world, though, Guy is an NPC (non-player character) in the elaborate, open-world video game Free City, whose coding was stolen from its original creators (Jodie Comer's Millie and Joe Keery's Walter) by douchey developer Antwan (the pricelessly funny Taika Waititi). In Reynolds' world, he's Guy, a mild-mannered bank teller in a blue shirt whose daily life – like that of The Lego Movie's Emmet – is one predictably happy moment after another: extending a morning greeting to his goldfish ordering the same cup of coffee from the same friendly barista checking in with his best buddy Buddy (Lil Rey Howery) getting robbed at gunpoint by an endless cycle of masked thieves. That didn't, however, prevent me from following the storyline, convoluted though it is. It's merely trying to tickle us, and Levy's outing is easily one of the most ticklish mass entertainments that 2021 has yet delivered.įree Guy will likely be even more fun if you're hip to the current gaming scene – which, despite my adoration for AppleTV+'s Mythic Quest, I most assuredly am not. I literally can't remember the last time extravagant visual effects in a non-animated movie were employed almost solely in the service of joy, but this cinematic video game is nothing but joy – a brainy, imaginative, unexpectedly touching Hollywood blockbuster that, in a refreshing change of pace, isn't trying to overpower us. That was pretty much my expression throughout the film, too. ![]() Throughout most of director Shawn Levy's action comedy Free Guy, Ryan Reynolds walks and runs and drives around with an expression of awed, smiling wonder.
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