Free Guy
Year: 2021
Rating: PG-13
Length: 115 minutes / 1.92 hours
This pandemic has messed with my sense of time. I could have sworn that Free Guy (2021) had already come out, but it had just been endlessly delayed until this year. As someone who enjoys video games, I was hesitant to watch this movie because it could be filled with too many references that would immediately date it. Fortunately, I was surprised by the few glimpses of a deeper plot hidden behind Free Guy‘s goofy exterior. Of course, Ryan Reynolds makes this movie work with his best PG-13 Deadpool impression.
Within the first three minutes of this film, I thought to myself, “Oh, this is just The LEGO Movie (2014).” A non-player character (NPC) named Guy (Ryan Reynolds) breaks out of the mundanity of his existence to go on a great video game adventure. It wasn’t until much later in the film that I realized the major plot points of The Truman Show (1998) were influencing the climax. Still, using a Grand Theft Auto-like video game to explore what it means to play (or live life) without violence is perhaps too subtle to be noticed by most.
The few qualms I have with this movie come from how video games are created and run. I felt the “big ticking clock” that drives the plot is completely bogus because video games don’t cease to work when a sequel comes out. Sure, there might be a dip in the number of players of an online game, but there are still users of previous versions of a franchise, regardless. Despite this huge and glaring plot hole, Free Guy was a fun movie filled with just enough video game references (a la Ready Player One (2018)) not to be dated but also pay homage to its origins.
A fun movie about video games with some extremely subtle and powerful messages, I give Free Guy 4.0 stars out of 5.
