There are high concept movies, and there are high concept movies that you need the resources of a major movie studio to really pull off. "Free Guy" is such a project, a rare original property, even though it is heavily based on and draws from the gaming world. I don't think this movie would work if it didn't have copious amounts of expensive CGI to create its fantasy universe, or an A-lister like Ryan Reynolds playing the lead, a video game character named Guy.
More than any other recent film set in a video game world, like "Ready Player One" or the recent "Jumanji" movies, "Free Guy" feels closer to the actual culture of gaming and game creation as it exists now, even though the featured game, "Free City," is fictional. It's totally comfortable with using the visual language and narrative conventions of games like "Grand Theft Auto" and "Fortnite," and assumes the audience is familiar with them too. The action takes place not only in "Free City,"but also in the real world, at the gaming company, Soonami, that created and maintains the game.
There are two parallel narratives going on for most of the film. First, you have Guy, living out his repetitive, super-limited existence as an NPC, or background non-player character in "Free City," where the players go on crazy missions that involve a lot of wanton violence and destruction. Guy works at a bank that regularly gets robbed multiple times a day, and his best friend is a totally ineffectual NPC security guard, Buddy (Lil Rel Howery). One day, Guy sees and becomes infatuated with a player named Molotov Girl (Jodie Comer), which leads to him breaking out of his pre-programmed loop and becoming a player in the game himself. Meanwhile, in the real world, Molotov Girl is really a woman named Millie, who is trying to find proof in "Free City" that Soonami head honcho Antwan (Taika Waititi) took the game that she and her partner Keys (Joe Keery) created, and used its code in "Free City."
Director Shawn Levy, and writers Matt Lieberman and Zak Penn, wring a lot of comedy from both parts of the film. "Free City" is one, big send-up of gaming conventions - everything from ridiculous player skins to lazy character creation to anarchic player behavior - treated as perfectly understandable because most of the players are revealed to be children. Ryan Reynolds is great as Guy, this super earnest, super wholesome n00b who becomes the hero of "Free City." His character is ridiculous in construction, but Reynolds is at his most loveable, and he makes it work. And yes, this movie is something of a stealth rom-com. Meanwhile, Millie and Keys are dealing with deadlines at Soonami and the sinister designs of Antwan, the kind of nightmare Silicon Valley CEO that has become a new stock villain in recent media. This is the weaker side of the film, and you can sense good actors like Waititi flailing around a bit as they attempt to lampoon game company culture.
"Free Guy"is straightforward enough that anyone can have fun with it, but it really is a love letter to gaming. There are the expected easter eggs and references everywhere, but also cameos from prominent Twitch streamers, and the worldwide popularity of gaming actually serves as a plot point a few times, with Guy achieving international fame due to his online antics. A lot of work went into making "Free City" feel like a real open-world game, and the movie does an especially good job at contrasting what the game looks like to the players, and what the game looks like to Guy and the other NPCs. There's still some obvious hand-holding, and the basement-dwelling gamer nerd stereotype still rears its head occasionally, but I'm counting this as a win for better representation of the gaming community.
As summer blockbusters go, this is very solid. The plotting is messy, but the cast is good,and the execution is often very good. I can forgive some stupid contrivances when it's in the name of an original property getting the chance to go this hard in the name of nerdy comedy. And I do hope Disney will let Reynolds and Levy and friends make a few more in this vein.
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