Free Guy (2021)
I wanted to see this movie on the day it came out, which also just happened to be our 15th wedding anniversary and we were on vacation. But instead we went to
a fancy restaurant.
C'est la vie. To be fair, the food
was really good. But it was noticeably lacking in Ryan Reynolds.
Months pass. I
tried to get people to see this movie with me in theaters, but no luck. I really wanted to see this on a big screen. I waited until it had been out a while, because COVID and theaters and suchlike, and I figured there would be fewer people packing into theaters towards the end of its run, but still no dice. And then it went away.
And then one day, while grocery shopping in a local upscale-ish grocery store (wife can't have just ANY cheese for Xmas dinner stuff oh no must be special hard-to-find kind), I find they have a basket of movies on disc at the end of the wine aisle (Product placement!) which includes the Blu-ray of
Free Guy and so I said heck with it, I'm getting it, 'cuz I've wanted to see this since it was announced
eighteen months ago and I know I'm gonna want to add it to my library eventually anyway. Just one problem: we don't own a Blu-ray player.
So anyway, we now own a Blu-ray player (it was inevitable. And on sale!) and, "in exchange" for watching
Hudson Hawk (1991) with her (it wasn't really an exchange, she already wanted to see it, though not so much as I did), we sat through it a week or so before I left for my current CA trip.
It was everything I was waiting for.
See, I've been a MMORPG player of one type or another since the days of
LPMud. I've worked behind the scenes on games. Not to the same level as what's depicted in the film, of course, but still enough to
know. And of course I've had the times where I imagine the characters living busy little lives of their own when we're not around,
Toy Story-style. And if you are
any kind of online gamer these days, you will "get" the world that Guy lives in--that we see in the film. It's simultaneously "a Ryan Reynolds movie" and a pastiche of as many gaming tropes as they could smoosh into this film without angering too many lawyers. And it's fantastic the same way that
The Last Action Hero (1993) is fantastic, or that
The Matrix (1989) or
Dark City (1998) are fantastic. There's a story being told here, and that story is entertaining, sure, but the story unfolding in front of our faces is not THE
only story being told, if you get what I'm saying here. Yes, there is a story about Guy achieving a sentience of sorts and trying to find out where he fits (Guy is also admiringly,
spectacularly wholesome the entire time he is doing so, and, in a "show, don't tell" kind of way, attempts to [r|t]each the audience
by example, without resorting to Hollywood's typical immersion-ruining unsubtle heavy-handedness), but there is also a YA romance/love story going on, and of course the whole selfish/evil corporate overlord schtick. There's a WHOLE lot of "Technology does not actually work that way!" going on, but I suppose that really only breaks immersion for people who actually work in the industry. Also the music is
Shrek-level brilliant with its mix of specifically-selected pop hits alongside the electro-orchestral score provided by Christophe Beck (who has done soundtracks for some of the MCU, as well as
Frozen).
My wife recognized more of the actors than I did, since she is more plugged into modern TV and cinema (and fandoms) than I, though I recognized more of the references. There was one in particular that I caught (no,
not the Wilhelm scream) that I found supremely fantastic, but I can't remember what it was at the moment. Ah well. I want to watch it again anyway, and so I will have something else to look forward to once I get home.
--Patrick
His origin story has been done to death, so I really like that it jumped right in and focused on Batman solving crimes. And I liked that they used the "regular" bad guys like Falcone, and I'm glad they kept Penguin and Riddler realistic.
