I went into Free Guy as I often do, thinking “Please don’t suck, please don’t suck.” For a lot of different reasons, one of them being that Ryan Reynolds is nowhere near as good at picking out movies as I’d like him to be. The Hitman’s Bodyguard? I had to watch the opening credits of Deadpool a lot of times to get over that one.
Well, the good news is that Free Guy doesn’t suck. It’s a fun movie with a lot of heart in it. Ryan Reynolds is good at playing likeable people; it’s pretty the much the whole schtick of his public persona on Twitter, for a start. So making him the most likeable thing in the movie isn’t just pandering to his ego all Tom Cruise stylee, it’s using your materials efficiently. It’s also a brave actor that decides to go up against the one and only Jodie Comer and hope to be the most interesting thing on screen. And the writers know what they’ve got; within ten seconds of her showing up, there’s a joke about accents. Sadly, there aren’t many actual accents after that, but then if they’d let her go full Villanelle, it would have been The Millie Show with a free guy thrown in that no-one was even looking at.
And that would have scuppered the movie. A few years back Zak Penn wrote the screenplay for Ready Player One, a great looking movie that I really didn’t like, and Free Guy suggests that either RPO went wrong after it was written, or that Penn’s learned something from the experience. Of course it helps when you don’t have a set text to stick to. But all the same you can see a lot of recycled ideas; it didn’t exactly come as a surprise to me that the same writer had been involved in both things. First time the agent of change is outside the game trying to get in, second time he’s on the inside, maybe trying to get out, but in both movies the big point is massive on-line game world at the mercy of an unhinged techno-bro who just sees it as a way of making money.
The big difference is where the heart lies, because while the engine of RPO is essentially the idea that one person can win the world and change everything by starting a war, the engine of Free Guy is that one person can start a movement in which everyone comes to see that they’re free to live a fruitful life, not just fight for victories that only mean something to the people pulling your strings.
And with the cast they’ve got, we can all have fun watching it. Reynolds has always been good at casually competent guys trying to be better at something they’re not being given the space to concentrate on. (Honestly, watch Deadpool again with that in mind and look at how much of the time offing villains seems like a distraction to him rather than the point of the scene). Taiki Waititi is a famously likeable man who can nonetheless play villains whose very ridiculousness is part of their intimidation factor. Nothing’s more frightening in reality that an insecure idiot who’s stumbled into a position of power. Jodie Comer is, well, Jodie Comer, a woman who can put a spin on “Good luck with your life time supply of virginity.” that ricochets off the back of the screen while she’s walking away without looking back.
Jodie’s the only person stretching herself in the movie, playing both sides of the virtual divide. Her game persona is pretty much Lara Croft with a breastplate and an Aussie accent (wonderfully, the avatar who calls her out on her Aussie accent is played by Ryan Reynolds' go-to butt-monkey Hugh Jackman), all sass and swagger and “ain’t no-one got time for this”. In the real world her character is softer and more beleaguered, and Comer sells both facets without breaking a sweat.
If I’ve a niggle with the thing, it’s that even though the most important role is played by a woman, it’s still a man’s movie. It’s not just that Guy is the focus of the action, and does most of the important hero stuff. It’s that even though Millie is Guy’s motivation for doing everything that he does, her role in that is essentially passive and all down to the decision of another man, her coding partner, Keys. (another stealth performance from Stranger Things’ Joe Keery’s knack for against the odds good guys). Guy comes to life because his original coding was based on Keys’ crush on Millie. I was niggling on that when we smashed our way to the rom-com ending where those crazy kids finally got it together, and while I really liked the way that Ryan Reynolds sold his bit in the reveal, I would have been just as happy without the pay-off. I’d have been happier too if they’d found a better way to nuance the idea that for Guy to getr Molotov’s attention, he’d have to “level up”. Men ought to be better, but being better is not a transaction. Something which Ryan Reynolds gets across really well in the rest of the movie, so I’m blaming the writing here.
It’s a niggle. In a movie which most of the time takes an idiotic premise and makes it work better than any video game movie I’ve ever seen. In its best moments it reminds me most of The Lego Movie: both are majoring in good natured anarchy where anything can happen and most people are doing their best. And I like its core message of rebelling against routine to be a good person instead of a bad ass. Most of the audience had probably paid for their tickets by doing stuff they didn’t much want to do that didn’t make the world any better for anyone they cared about. I don’t imagine a dumb video game movie is going to change that, but if it gets even a few people thinking...
And if it doesn’t, it’s still a fun movie with a positive message. I’ll take that. Signs are, I’ll take it again in a couple of years, since apparently they’re trying to figure out a sequel….
