Grade: B-
Free Guy is reminiscent of The Truman Show, except instead of a man discovering his whole life has been an elaborate reality TV show, a man finds out he’s a minor character in a video game. Our lead character, Guy, is played by Ryan Reynolds with the sharp-witted irreverence of his Deadpool role. He is a non-player or background character in a video game. His personality reminded me of a fusion of Truman Burbank, Buddy the Elf from Elf, and Deadpool. He even has an oft-repeated catch phrase much like Truman’s “Good morning, and in case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night.” “Don’t have a good day, have a great day.”
We don’t have a great movie. We have a fair one that has its moments. When Guy starts stepping out of his NPC box and becoming a main player in the game, racking up all these points, it makes national, if not world news. In the “real life” realm of this movie, it’s literally all anybody’s talking about, including being a Jeopardy question, with a cameo by Alex Trebek. Numerous cameos from famous youtube gamers abound, almost all of which went over my head, except for when I recognized a voice I’ve been annoyed by before. I am not a gamer.
Director Shawn Levy has a nice resume that includes This Is Where I Leave You, Date Night, and the Night at the Museum films. Jodie Comer does impressive work in essentially two roles – the love interests of both the real world and the game. Joe Keery (Stranger Things, Molly’s Game) makes his usual fine impression. It’s a hoot to see Lil Rel Howery again, here as Guy’s best friend. He was the TSA agent in Get Out. He stole every scene he was in there and here. Taika Waititi, the writer/director/Hitler of Jojo Rabbit, throws himself into this role with fervor and is fun to see, even if the material isn’t always doing him the best favors.
I wanted to know more about what makes Guy tick. What are his thoughts, hopes, dreams, fears, and other feelings? All of this is largely sidestepped in favor of the gamer target audience and big action sequences. If it had dug deeper and been more daring, it would have been a more meaningful film. I understand why it went in the direction it did, but it’s farther away from the movie I wanted to see.
Grade: B-
Film Reviews by Mark 
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