FREE GUY
The wool falls away from Guy’s (Ryan Reynolds) eyes.
★★
OUT NOW CERT 12A / 115 MINS
DIRECTOR Shawn Levy
CAST Ryan Reynolds, Jodie Comer, Taika Waititi, Joe Keery
PLOT Bank-teller Guy (Reynolds) has an everyday routine: wake up, talk to goldfish, drink coffee, go to work. But he’s about to be shaken out of it when he falls for a mysterious stranger in sunglasses (Comer), then starts to become aware that he is, in fact, a video-game character in a world that doesn’t exist.
THERE’S A MOMENT in Free Guy where the hero, Guy, locked in battle with a ’roided-up clone of himself, does something unexpected. Something which, in fact, could only have happened after Disney’s takeover of 20th Century Fox in 2019. It’s a fun, Ready Player One-esque moment, which will very likely please crowds. But when you stop and think about it for five seconds, that something actually makes scant sense within the logic of the narrative. It’s emblematic of a movie that is eager to please, throwing all manner of eye-sizzling VFX at the screen, but that doesn’t really hang together, even as you’re watching it.