Free Guy Movie Review: Ryan Reynolds’ New Film Packs a Hilarious, Wholesome Punch With a Unique Spin to Videogame Movies! (LatestLY Exclusive)

Free Guy Movie Review: Sometimes you just want to sit in a cozy, dark room and just switch off your brain and watch a film, and Free Guy exactly delivers that. Featuring Ryan Reynolds in the role of Guy (the everyday “Guy” cliché), a NPC in an open-world videogame, who begins to realise that he is in a videogame and goes on to uncover a conspiracy to save his friends. A movie about a NPC going through an existential crisis honestly has no right being this good. Unless he is Wreck-it Ralph, of course! Free Guy: Ryan Reynolds’ Adventure-Comedy Film Gets a New Release Date in India, Will Hit the Screens on September 17!

If you have seen Ready Player One, then the concept over here you will find to be quite similar. There is a videogame played by literally everyone in the world, you have a group of characters trying to defeat a company, and at the center of it there is hero loved by everyone. The concept is simple enough, and while similar to Ready Player One, Free Guy still manages to feel different.

Ryan Reynolds plays your standard Ryan Reynolds character that you have come to expect from him, and honestly that’s not a bad thing. It’s his sense of humour and charm that makes his character so likable in Free Guy. I honestly had a blast just seeing him be himself on the screen and that was great. Jodie Comer and Joe Keery do great in their supporting characters who just want to set things straight and get their game back from this huge gaming company.  Even some of the NPC characters, especially of Lil Rel Howery provide a great comedic and heart to the film that it helps rise up the stakes more and makes you care about all of them.

Watch the Trailer:

While the characters are fun, that wouldn’t be achievable with a fun story, and Free Guy is that from start to finish. Centered around a videogame, this could have gone way too wrong considering how modern pop culture topics are addressed in movies nowadays, but I am happy to say that Free Guy is a great exception of that. It’s not going for that realistic feel and the filmmakers know that too, so they just go all bonkers with the world and don’t hold back. Also the various videogame inspirations are quite felt here. If you have ever played some like Grand Theft Auto, then it will instantly feel familiar to you.

There are some great cameos in Free Guy. Some are quite subtle, and some will just crack you open. Especially this one cameo at the end, that I won’t spoil, had me in stitches and is probably one of the best I have seen in any movie. It was like watching the exact time Disney and Fox merged together. With heavy gaming inspirations to the plot, there are a bunch of popular Youtubers and Twitch Streamers in here too, the most notable being Jacksepticeye and Pokimane. It was great seeing them and if you have been following the online gaming scene for the last few years, then this will surely bring a smile to your face. Especially with me also being heavily into gaming, I think Free Guy perfectly did its job in getting its target audience hooked. There were some gaming and pop-culture references too that I thoroughly enjoyed, and will probably enjoy it more while watching it a second time. Free Guy: Ryan Reynolds Opens Up About His Role in Sci-Fi Comedy Film, Calls His Character ‘Naive and Innocent’.

Now while of course I did mention that the film does go completely bonkers with its concepts, I got to admit that there were a few times that some of it got me out of the smooth viewing experience. While overall gaming is quite well represented, there were a few instances where you could feel that the movie was just trying too hard to be cool. It’s like a 50 year old coming to the skate park and just trying to be hip with the kids, when you know that’s just not happening and convincing. Had these moments been a bit more fine tuned, I would have appreciated it more.

Talking about characters I have to mention Taika Waititi as well. I love Taika Waititi, I love everything he has done these past few years, so why didn’t he click with me here? I hardly could care about Taika’s role as Antwan. He was way too less in the film for me to actually consider him as a serious threat, as a matter of fact, the morally ambiguous characters felt more like antagonists than Antwan. From start to finish, Antwan hardly has a character arc or development where he sticks out like a black sheep in a cast full of fun characters.

Yay

-Ryan Reynolds and his supporting cast is great

-The concept is amazing

-Great cameos

-Amazing references

-Surprising amount of heart in the story

Nay!

-Concept could have shot higher than it should

-Taika Waititi’s character just wasn’t convincing

Final Thoughts

When I watched the trailer for Free Guy, I thought this would be another by-the-numbers Hollywood studio film, but I was pleasantly surprised by the final product. With some great references, cameos and a heartfelt story, Free Guy was an amazing watch that I loved every minute of. If you want something wholesome and fun to watch, then Free Guy is definitely for you.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Sep 13, 2021 07:41 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).