Free Guy: Film Review

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Jodie Comer, Taika Waititi, Joe Keery

Director: Shawn Levy

Ryan Reynolds is back in wry, smirking and wisecracking form in a feelgood film that pokes fun at gaming culture, as well as trying to say something poignant about how it's time for background characters to stand up for themselves in the modern world.

Reynolds is Guy, a naive and innocent bank teller who lives every day in the same format. From getting the same coffee to exhorting all his customers to have a great day, Guy's routine is set in stone. But he's not happy, confessing to his security guard Buddy that he longs to find his perfect girl.

So, his world is turned upside down one day when said girl (played by Killing Eve's Jodie Comer) walks past him in the street, and changes everything - literally when he finds out he's a video game character in an open-world video game.

Part Truman Show, part riff on gaming culture, part rehash of Wreck-It Ralph and part ripoff of games like Grand Theft Auto and Watch_Dogs, Free Guy is a comedically silly story that's dipped in Ready Player One's ethos toward the end and one that's really only interested in providing a bubblegum blast of blockbuster fun beneath its pixelated surface.

But that's totally fine - from Reynolds' trademark schtick with the script that rewards his penchant for smug silliness to Comer's struggling real-life gamer who's trying to show the code she wrote for a game was ripped off, Free Guy tangles itself up at times in large slowing chunks of exposition for those who 

are non-gamers, or not as invested in the virtual world on the screen.

Packed with manic and dizzying VFX and background gamer gags, if you're on Free Guy's wavelength, you'll certainly get a lot out of its energy and commitment to the cause. It's perhaps a sunnier take on a virtual existential crisis, but when the film slows, as it frequently does, some of the gaps open up a little wider.

Popping back and forth to the real world shows the narrative gap - and while Waititi just about keeps it on the right side of grating for his game CEO pushing the troops to do crunch while popping catchphrases, real life isn't as much fun as the virtual life. 

With a crowd-rousing speech of "we don't all have to be spectators for all our lives" likely to catch a chord in these Covid-19 times, Free Guy wears its gamer heart on its sleeve. It offers fun and frivolity throughout its DNA with a smattering of heart when it counts - much like a good video game, Free Guy stays with you while you're watching and revelling in its visual inventiveness.