‘Free Guy’ Review

While video game movies have mostly fallen flat, many of the films that satirize and explore the world of gaming have found success. For example, Wreck-It Ralph critiqued the role of a villain in video games and delved into what might happen if the villain was a real character and wanted to be more than what they were programmed to be. 

Ready Player One showed what a future may look like where gaming has taken over the world to the point that no one wants to live in reality anymore. The gaming world became a reality of freedom and pop culture fantasy. Free Guy is a little bit of both, but it has enough clever writing and charming characters to break free of its many blockbuster tropes. 

Premise

Guy (Ryan Reynolds) is an NPC (Non-Playable Character) living in Free City, a video game city run amok with players who rob, beat up, and kill NPC’s all the time. Guy finds himself bored with doing the same thing, in the same way, every day. Once he takes a special pair of sunglasses from a player, he finally sees a world filled with freedom and opportunity. He also discovers that his world is not what he thinks it is. 

Review

Thankfully, Reynolds is not just playing another Deadpool character. While he does have moments of sarcasm and snarkiness, he is mostly playing a child-like adult. He’s an unbelievable optimist who finds wonder in all of the small things. This clashes nicely with Jodie Comer, a real-life player whose avatar becomes a love interest for Reynolds. She is a more hardened character who is on a mission to uncover something hidden in the game, which leads to Guy helping her. 

Joe Keery plays a game developer for Free City who plays a large part in how the game operates. Keery is very likable in this role and it’s nice to see him in a large movie role outside of Stranger Things. Taika Waititi takes on an interesting role as the villain and he is chewing up as much of the scenery as possible. I can definitely see his performance being too much for some audience members and it was on the border for me. If it had gone any further, I wouldn’t have liked it. 

Lil Rel Howery has a smaller role as Guy’s best friend, but he’s hilarious per usual. He has a couple of moments of sincerity that show off more of his acting skills. He and Reynolds play off each other really well. 

In a video game world, there are obviously going to be a lot of special effects and they look good for the most part. Director Shawn Levy makes an interesting decision where some of the bad CGI is actually intentional. It’s either a glitch or something unfinished. Levy creates plenty of great action sequences and mixes the humor into the film nicely. There is a lot of heart, which Levy has done well in previous films. It’s hard to not be charmed by these characters and the way their relationships develop. 

The writing is very creative as well. Some jokes miss or go on for too long, however, there are plenty of funny moments. The most clever aspect is the way it treats NPCs. The characters tend to freak out if anything changes course. For example, Guy decides to order a latte instead of his usual coffee and all the other NPC’s begin to freak out. These are nice touches that also serve as a reminder of how NPC’s suffer a cruel fate since they are programmed to do the same thing every day. 

Gamers will get a kick out of this movie as it really embraces the world of gaming. There is a lot of video game terminology thrown around and famous people in the gaming world make cameos throughout the film. Free City itself is a cross between Grand Theft Auto and Fortnite. There are a few references and cameos that will have audiences shouting with excitement. 

The one thing missing in Free Guy is great pacing. It starts and ends really strong, but comes to a lull in the middle. It begins to focus too much on the real world characters and that is where it started to lose me, especially since it went into the more technical mumbo jumbo. However, it bounced back for me in the third act right before I completely checked out. 

Final Verdict

Free Guy is the most surprising movie of the year. Yes, it has cliches, but it executes them very well and ends up being endlessly entertaining. There are moments where it comes to a bit of a standstill in terms of pacing, but its strong finale makes up for it. It’s easily one of the best blockbusters of the year thus far. 

Final score: 4/5