Movie Review: 'Free Guy'

When I think of Free Guy I think of a vapid, mindless, forgettable experience. Much like Jungle Cruise and The Suicide Squad before it, the empty headed spectacle was there and I didn’t dislike it but I also didn’t enjoy it. That’s surprising for me because I have always enjoyed Ryan Reynolds. I enjoy Reynolds’ quick wit and goofball physicality and both of those wonderful comic traits are in play in Free Guy. And still, I just don’t care.

Free Guy is the story of Guy, played by Ryan Reynolds. Guy is what video game players and engineers call an N.P.C or non-playable character. In video games an NPC exists to fill out the background of a video game in the same way extras fill out the background of a movie. N.P.C’s repeat the same activities and dialogue and they don’t die permanently. They can be killed but they just respawn back to their routine.

Guy appears to enjoy his routine as a bank teller where robberies are such a regular occurance that Guy and his pal Buddy (Lil Rel Howery), chat about plans after work while the robbery plays out. Then, one day after work, Guy bumps into Molotov (Jodie Comer) and a light goes on in his mind. He should not have been able to interact with her as he did. This leads Guy to try and see her again and break his routine.

Guy soon finds himself stopping a robbery, something NPC’s don’t do. Guy takes the robber's glasses and suddenly he can see the world of a video game all around him. Molotov explains to Guy that he is in the game ‘Free City’ and that if he wants to spend time with her, he will need to level up. Being a great guy, Guy refuses to get points by robbing and harming people. Instead, he earns points by being the only good Guy in a world of Bad guys and background NPC’s.

Coming to be known as Blue Shirt Guy, because his color palette is the only thing notable about him, Guy begins to get famous for his kindness and his growing clout finally gains the attention of Antoine (Taika Waititi), the owner of Free City, the game in which Guy exists. Free City is a combination of The Sims and Grand Theft Auto and if these are no longer timely references in the video game world, sorry, I am not a gamer and I don’t have any other comparisons. Look’em up or take my word that these are good comparisons.

There is a conspiracy plot thread running through Free Guy. Jodie Comer’s Molotov has an agenda to prove that Free City was stolen from her game that she created with her friend, Keys (Joe Keery), who still works for Antoine despite knowing that Antoine stole his big idea. Regardless, they need Guy to help them find fragments of code to prove that they created the A.I behind Free City and win a lawsuit against Antoine… or something like that.

As I mentioned at the start, I don’t care about any of this. Free Guy is bright and shiny and empty as the day is long. Earlier I compared it to Jungle Cruise and yeah, they are basically the same thing. They are mindless spectacles starring very pretty people enacting what we know should be exciting and funny. These actors could do anything in these spaces and it would appear familiar enough for us to mindlessly consume and forget about.

I tried to be angry about Free Guy and the cheap laughs like having a star game player in the real world use Channing Tatum as his avatar in the game. The real gamer is made up to look like a slobby, sloppy, twenty-something who lives at home with his mom. Because gamers as growth stunted man children is a truly original take. Never seen that one before huh? UGH! This character is presented alongside successful YouTube and Twitch stream personalities who kind of defy the stereotype and they only seem to magnify the hackneyed overdone premise of the Channing Tatum joke character.

But, I still don’t care. I can’t even muster enough ire to hate Free Guy. I’m reminded of the feeling I had the first time I was prescribed anxiety medication. The dosage was too high and I went completely emotionally numb. Nothing registered as good or bad, everything was this painful absence of any notable emotion. That was my experience of Free Guy, a painful absence of any substance of emotion, joy or agony.

Ennui is defined as a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement. Free Guy is ennui. I feel listless dissatisfaction in the wake of Free Guy. The movie didn’t appear to occupy time and engendered no excitement, it barely elicited regard. I know there were images on screen and a semblance of people talking and even a story being told. But, in my mind, it was like staring into a black hole.

Free Guy symbolizes complete absence. It is the definition of emptiness. Watching a blank screen for 90 minutes might be as entertaining, depending on whether you prefer your own inner monologue or Ryan Reynolds’ rat-a-tat comic delivery. Reynolds isn’t the problem with Free Guy. Rather, director Shawn Levy is the problem. He’s created such an astonishingly derivative and joyless blockbuster that even Reynolds’ innate magnetism can’t escape from Levy’s black hole of lethargy inducing torpor.

So yeah, I don’t recommend Free Guy as a movie but I also just don’t care.