Free Guy(Now Showing In Theatres Across India)
Starring Ryan Reynolds, Jodie Comer, Joe Keery, Lil Rel Howery, Utkarsh Ambudkar, and Taika Waititi
Directed by Shawn Levy
Rating: **
Ryan Reynolds is a likeable actor…or maybe ‘actor’ is going too far. A supremely charismatic star , whom I always enjoy watching. After sitting through the much-hyped Free Guy in a near-empty theatre, overpowered but underwhelmed by all the sound and tomfoolery I was left scratching my head.
Where in Ryan’s impressive repertoire does this film belong? Well, it is no Deadpool for sure. But it not Green Lantern either. For those who came in late Green Lantern is to Ryan’s career what Zero is to Shah Rukh Khan. Got it?
I started off completely detesting Free Guy. It features Reynolds as Guy(free or not, you decide) a character in a video game who doesn’t know he is not real. Having based the entire film on this monumental premise , the co-writers Matt Lieberman and Zak Penn frequently sit back to admire their own ingenuity.
Some of the episodes specially featuring Taika Waititi as the gaming tycoon are so amateurishly written they appear to be inhouse jokes with the punchline missing.
The mood is one of endless selfcongratulation with the hero-trapped-in-a-video-game premise breathing down the plot’s neck like an ill-fitting choker around an overly dressed dowager’s neck. There is just no quality-control here as Guy swishes around from one overstuffed adventure to another , each more callow than the previous, so that there comes a time in our movie-viewing experience when we find ourselves asking: is this all?
To call the proceedings lightweight would be an understatement.Besides being an ostensibly grand gamers’ delight, Free Guy is also a love story between Guy and Millie(Jodie Comer) who is not only one of the builders of the game but also a participant in the game where Millie meets Guy and the inevitable happens.They exchange glances, share bubblegum ice cream(is there really such a flavour? Does it matter?) and Guy confesses he wants to kiss Millie “badly”(you know the joke that follows).
This confession comes as a surprise to us,since there is zero chemistry between Reynold and his co-star Jodie Comer. He shares a better kinship with his best friend(Lil Rel Howrey). The best moment is when Guy’s buddy tells him why it’s okay if they are not real people. To Guy’s friend the moment is real.And that’s all that matters.
Sorry, we can’t share the same level of enthusiasm. The film is a victim of lazy writing and selfindulgent plot conflicts that push the characters into an uncomfortable corner from where they can retreat to no safe place except extinction. Too ambitious for its own good? Or not ambitious enough to amount to something? I am not sure. And it doesn’t really matter.
