Last night I watched the latest Ryan Reynolds’ movie Free Guy. The trailer made me incredibly uninterested in this movie if I’m being honest. The trailer made the movie seem like it was going to be a one note type of comedy. It seemed like some lovable idiot finds himself thrust into the center of a story. The jokes in the trailer seemed like it was just going to be another stupid humor movie. Something that I’m totally fine with! But I just have not been in the mood for something like this recently. But, was Free Guy more than meets the eye? Let’s talk it out!

I won’t beat around the bush here; Free Guy is exactly what the trailer makes it out to be. It’s a rather stupid comedy with an admittedly interesting premise. An NPC living in a video game world suddenly finds himself sentient. He realizes that maybe there is more to his world than just working at a bank. He realizes that maybe he does not have to live every single day the same. He suddenly decides to be more than a background character, he decides to be a main character. The idea is actually interesting and could be something special. The story that they decided to tell, however, is sort of just… bland. It’s honestly sort of boring. It’s a love story between this NPC and a video game character played by a real-life player. But much more than that, it’s a love story between that real-life player and a love struck programmer that works on the game. The only interesting part of this love story is when the two men, one real and one fictional, both vie for the same woman. The woman knows that one side of this relationship is fictional, but she still feels drawn to him. But sadly, this is thrown away almost immediately. The whole reason Ryan Reynolds character gains sentience is because of this woman. He has a romance with her, but immediately forgets her when it is explained through heavy exposition that his world is digital. Then, he just forgets about her. He just does not care that she rapidly moves on from him when she gets what she needed from him. They were building to something that could have been special, but opted for the more boring option in the end.

That’s just how I feel about this movie in general. It’s just the laziest story they could have told through a fairly unique world. There could have been some interesting ideas played with, but they just ignored it. They went with a typical love story in the end. Probably the least interesting option. I was ready for this movie to end because you realize exactly what’s happening around the hour mark. That’s honestly about it.

Now for a personal complaint: I love that movies continue to try and show video game worlds, but I usually hate how they do it. As someone that plays a ton of video games, it always just makes me cringe when you can tell that these stories are being told by older peoples’ ideas of what video games are. They always try to shove as much video game lingo and other video game specific things into these movies. But it just comes across as pandering? Free Guy totally falls victim to this too. It uses maybe a dozen streamers and Youtubers in the movie. These Youtubers and streamers talk about Ryan Reynolds’ character as if he is another player in this game they are all playing. They are heavily involved during a montage. But it goes on for so long. Which is a giant portion of the movie that is just carried by horrible acting. None of these streamers or Youtubers are actors… That’s no secret. So why give them so much screen time? That’s nothing against them, it just was another part of the movie that made me cringe. Which is a problem because it takes up fifteen minutes of the movie. I just felt like it was a movie for older people about video games. Not necessarily a movie for video game players. I don’t know. It just felt cheap a little bit.

Overall, I give Free Guy a 1 out of 4. It’s an extremely basic plot with a rather boring outcome. Really the only enjoyable performance is that of Taika Waititi. But even then, his character talks like another old person’s ideas about video games. Nothing against Taika. I just think the writing was lazy all around in this movie. They figured, “hey kids like this Ninja guy, throw him in there and they’ll eat it up!” Then sprinkle in some Fortnite references and maybe the gravity gun from Half-Life and oh baby you have a million dollar idea. But once they had that, they forgot to write an actually interesting story. The trailer has all the funniest jokes in it, but they don’t get milked for twenty minutes like in the full movie. I do think video game based movies can be great, but Free Guy certainly is not it.