Free Guy

Free Guy starts out awfully derivative, borrowing bits and pieces from other films such as Wreck-It Ralph, The Truman Show, The Lego Movie, Ready Player One and maybe a bit of Groundhog Day.  But, little by little, the movie starts to find its own voice, establishes a heart, and it began to work for me.  This is the kind of movie that sneaks up on you.

But the movie it reminded me the most of was 2019's Serenity, which not many people saw, and I wish I hadn't seen, as it ended up on the top spot of my picks for the worst films of that year.  That was the movie where Matthew McConaughey was a fishing boat captain who used to be married to Anne Hathaway, and then she approached him in order to ask if he would murder her current abusive husband.  The big reveal at the end (Spoiler Alert!) was that McConaughey was actually an on line avatar in a video game being played by a kid in his bedroom plotting to kill his abusive stepfather.  In a supposedly-serious drama that earned a lot of bad laughs, that ending reveal got the biggest from me.  I remember the people at my screening gathered outside after it was over, trying to figure out what they had just seen, like onlookers of a terrible traffic accident.  At least with this movie, director Shawn Levy (the Night at the Museum movies) and his writers have the good sense to apply a similar idea to a comedy, so we don't feel bad when we do laugh.

Like McConaughey in that film, our main hero Guy (Ryan Reynolds) is just a character in a massive multi-player online game called Free City.  More specifically, he's a Non-Playable Character, or an NPC.  He exists only in the background, and since the game he's in seems to be largely inspired by Grand Theft Auto, most of the playable characters beat him up, rob him, or murder him when they see him.  If he does die, he just wakes up in his bed, ready to start another day of abuse.  Guy's program is to greet his pet goldfish, eat breakfast, grab a coffee at the local coffee shop, and go to his job as a teller at the bank, which gets robbed by the playable characters every day.  But one day, Guy has a fateful encounter with "Molotov Girl" (Jodie Comer), a playable character that he seems oddly attracted to, and causes him to go off his pre-programmed route to work in order to follow her.

With her help, and a pair of special glasses that reveal the true video game nature of Guy's world, he begins to learn his place within the game, and becomes self-aware.  He starts instinctively going against the program, and doing his own thing, becoming a hero and "leveling up" by helping his fellow NPCs when they are being harassed by the players.  Meanwhile, in the real world, the idea of an NPC going rogue and doing his own thing in a game gets worldwide media attention.  This does not sit well with the game's credited creator, Antwan (Taika Waititi), who is planning to launch Free City 2 in a matter of days, and doesn't want people focused on the old game.  Also, "Molotov Girl's" player is actually Millie in real life (also Comer), who is trying to find evidence that Antwan stole the game's code from her and a fellow programmer named Keys (Joe Keery).  As she spends time with Guy within the game, she begins to realize that he is a free-thinking artificial intelligence, and if Antwan's plans are carried out, Guy, his world, and all the other NPCs who inhabit it will be destroyed.

When Free Guy is focused on the video game world, the movie seems to spin its wheels just a little, hitting on the same visual gags and characters over and over.  I know that Guy and his friends, like the security guard at the bank he works at (Lil Rey Howery) are programmed to live a certain way, so it makes sense within the script.  Still, for what seems to be a massive world of endless possibilities, we see very little of it.  Little by little, however, the movie started to work for me as Guy became self-aware, and started taking his life into his own hands, and the relationship he gradually builds with Molotov Girl.  I liked the idea of video game characters learning they don't have to be victims of the players.  Imagine if a Goomba in Super Mario Bros. suddenly decided to go against its programming to not be crushed under the Italian plumber's boot.  It's a fun idea, especially when Guy convinces his fellow NPCs to go on strike within the game.

Speaking of Guy, Reynolds gives him the likable, laid back attitude with a touch of snark that he has been mining to great success for a while now, but the real find here is Jodie Comer, a British actress whose most notable Hollywood role before this was a brief cameo in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.  She shows real star potential here, not only able to share the screen with Reynolds, but at times even steal some scenes away from him in her dual role.  The movie actually has a great cast, with a large number of surprise cameos from actors who have worked with Levy in the past, as well as actual YouTube gamers and streamers commentating on the action from time to time.  The movie manages to show a lot of love to the gaming community, and it's bound to make those within it happy.

Free Guy may owe a lot of inspiration to its visuals and ideas from a variety of sources, but it does have an identifiable heart that won me over.  The movie is eager to please, and gets better as it goes along and starts to find its own voice.  At the very least, it's a big budget studio blockbuster centered around video games that celebrates individuality, and I kind of like that.

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