Movies for Breakfast FREE GUY Review

Free Guy is finally here after delays, but was the wait worth it? Kinda.

Synopsis

A bank teller discovers that he’s actually an NPC inside a brutal, open world video game

Review
From director Shawn Levy, screenwriter Matt Lieberman, and starring Ryan Reynolds comes the movie Free Guy. Following the story of Guy (played by Ryan Reynolds) an NPC in a game called Free City. Guy lives a normal life as a bank teller with his best friend a security guard named Buddy (played by Lil Rel Howery). Upon meeting a player named Millie (played by Jodie Comer) he slowly discovers that there is more to his world than he originally thought. Inside the game world Guy begins to push back on the violent nature of the game to be a good guy in the world where he was designed to just be a pawn for other characters to beat up for thrills. Meanwhile in the real world the maker of the game Free City, Antwan (played by Taika Waititi) does not like what is happening with his game and tries to stop it before it can ruin sales of his upcoming sequel Free City 2.

Free Guy starts off with a very interesting premise, one that hasn’t been done in a modern sense and almost has a new age Truman Show vibe to it. Guy is a bank teller at a bank that is frequently visited by robbers, who he sees as heroes, known as the sunglasses people. These people are the actual players of the game, with everyone else being an NPC. Following Guy as he goes through his daily routine for it to suddenly change as he discovers the reality of his world is a lot of fun. Even more so by the reactions of the people in the game who think he’s just a glitched NPC or another player who is wearing an NPC skin. It plays the fish out of water trope well, with people acting like Guy is another player in this world which just confuses him even more. A great example of this is when he is confronted by two quality assurance staff members for the game Free City Mouser (played by Utkarsh Ambudkar) and Keys (Joe Keery) who believe him to be a hacker. As such they ask Guy how he got an NPC skin, and when he doesn’t comply threaten to kill him and ban him from the game forever. All of which are concepts that Guy does not understand leading to some great jokes. Scene like that fill the first half of the movie and bring some great comedy to the film.

Where the films really thrives though is with the videogame effects and digital view the world has. What is normal for Guy is everything crazy happening around him, which adds an extra note of humor to the film overall as things such as robberies, getting hit with cars, and even being shot are just standard things in his every day life. Then when he gets the glasses that allow him to see the game overlay on his world the entire aesthetic of the movie changes. It truly brings the idea of this videogame world to life with the colorful collectibles, the missions, and the entire interface that takes up the screen during these moments of the film. It stays just long enough to get an idea of what Guy is seeing, and is used to great effect without it being used too much or too little. While seeing everything flashing around the world with coins, missions, and player information is cool to see it would definitely be information overload if it took place during the whole film, so it is used sparingly. During those times it is used though, it takes it time to create all kinds of jokes and easter eggs that pop culture and videogame fans will enjoy.

The writing really is brought to life by the cast that is in this film. First off Ryan Reynolds seems to be the person this movie was meant to star from the beginning. It would be almost impossible to imagine anyone else in the role, as he plays the idea of an NPC in the beginning phenomenally. His acting and charisma are on full spotlight when he is discovering the truth but not fully understanding what is really going on still. Add into the mix Lil Rel Howery who plays Guy’s best friend Buddy and the two play off each other amazingly in their blissful ignorance of the world around them. Even to the point of some nice emotional moments between the two as Guy begins to learn the truth of the world and Buddy wants to just keep doing what he has always done. This mixed with the Jodie Comer’s character of Millie really allows her to shine as she works with Guy to tell him to reality of what is happening in his world. Allowing these two to play off each other in a completely different way. Every cast member in Free Guy does their role justice, even Taika Waititi as Antwan the creator of the game gets some funny moments even though he has fewer scenes than the rest of the cast. In these scenes he shines as the money hungry boss of the videogame company who only cares about making sequels that he can sell to the people who love his game to make even more money.

What is not as entertaining though is the commentary by streamers made throughout the film to explain what is happening in the game. Throughout the film the action and everything seems to stop to give cameos to various popular streamers so they can comment on what is happening in the movie. Usually, these kinds of scenes would be using news reels from tv to explain how people are viewing this in the real world. The use of them is creative as this kind of news would only really matter to gamers, so having it showed through Twitch or YouTube videos makes a lot of sense for the context of the film. Except for the fact that they do this along with news and clips from Jeopardy showing that ‘everyone’ is paying attention to what is happening in this game. It really breaks up what is happening and causes the movie to hit the brakes so we can see a 3-4 popular streamers say the same thing repeatedly. This sadly leads to the latter half of the movie which ends up falling into such a predictable set of tropes and standard save the world plot that it seems to forgo everything that made the first half of the movie great. While the first half of the movie has Guy being the only NPC who seems to be able to change, no matter what he does he can’t get other NPCs to believe him or follow him as they follow their initial programming. In the later half though it seems this is all forgotten as he gives a single speech and suddenly everyone is onboard for going against their programming. This way they can save their game which is about to be shut down for the upcoming sequel Free City 2. This way they can come together and save their world, while outside of the game the whole world is watching.

Closing Thoughts
Overall, the movie has a lot of great jokes that are timed perfectly, an interesting story, and a great cast to back it up. The story of a videogame character discovering his entire world is a lie has a lot of potential, but sadly the film gets bogged down becoming a ‘we have to save the world’ kind of adventure that everyone is watching. Due to the stakes of the film, there really is no sense of dire consequences with what is happening which leads to the second half not really having the same push as the first half. The movie even makes a comment about how people would want to watch a game world where the NPCs just interact with each other without there being any big plot to it. Which sums up what made the first half of the movie so great while making the second half feel slowed down and cluttered. The parts that make the film so great get washed to the side to become a pretty standard movie in the end. It’s worth checking out once, but not the kind of movie that will be worth watching again any time soon.

Trailer