FREE GUY: Fun But We’ve Seen Every Bit Of It Before

Now available on streaming services including HBOmax and Disney+

FREE GUY (Dir. Shawn Levy, 2021)

When movies are overly formulaic they often lead to overly formulaic reviews.

FREE GUY is one such film as it has many critics describing it as THE TRUMAN SHOW meets WRECK-IT-RALPH. Other titles that have been thrown into the premise mash-up are THE LEGO MOVIE, PLEASANTVILLE, and even THEY LIVE. 

After identifying those influences, or direct steals, reviews will move on to the all the pop culture references that are layered through this addition to the stuck-inside-a-video-game premise. The story being that Ryan Reynolds stars as a perfectly content background character (a bank teller in a heist scenario) in a popular interactive Grand Theft Auto-style video game, who becomes aware that his world is virtual. 

Reynold’s Guy (yes, his name is Guy) was clued into this revelation via his infatuation with Molotov Girl (Killing Eve’s Jodie Comer), a leather clad, cool-as-ice biker chick, who is a video game designer named Millie in the real world. Millie, and her programmer pal Walter (Stranger Things and Ozark’s Joe Kerry) had their source code for a game called Life Itself stolen (hey, shades of TRON!)by Taika Waititi as the arrogantly goofy Antwan, an evil CEO of Soonami Studios (I like that name). So our heroes, Guy, Millie, and Walter work together to claim their destinies, and free the cogs of Free City. Or something like that.

Oh, and this is the part of the review that acknowledges the sideline characters Buddy, played by the super affable Lil Rel Howery, who makes the best of his typical black best friend part; and Mouser, Walter’s wise-cracking Soonami co-worker played by Utkarsh Ambudkar. Both guys aid Guy in the game gags department so they are worth mentioning.

But it’s the rapid outpouring of pop culture references that are the real stars here. FREE GUY out-metas Reynold’s DEADPOOL flicks with Easter Eggs involving the MarvelVerse, THE SHINING, Pac-Man, Pokémon, Doctor Who, STAR WARS, Q*Bert, THE MATRIX, Jeopardy!, Rick and Morty, GROUNDHOG DAY, Mortal Kombat, READY PLAYER ONE, and even Diff’rent Strokes, among maybe dozens and dozens of other nods.

The fabric of all of these not-so-hidden touchstones that make up FREE GUY is patched together with so many familiar elements that it’s impossible to imagine the movie holding together without them. When Guy wields a STAR WARS lightsaber in a climactic battle with the arm of The Incredible Hulk in a scene featuring the theme from The Greatest American Hero, it’s supposed to be funny due to the audience’s recognition of these things, but it’s a cheap use of expensive aesthetics that probably only gathers a quick giggle because no clever comment is being made.

I ignored this movie when it was released last summer, as I suspected it was a noisy collection of movie and gamer clichés, but moviegoers lapped it up to the tune of over $300 million. I can understand that as it’s not without its charms as a busy yet breezy action comedy directed by Shawn Levy, whose career is mostly filled with feel-good rom coms, and family-friendly fare.

FREE GUY, even as a derivative amalgam, is fun, at least superficially. It would be more fun if we hadn’t spotted all of the references before, but maybe kids who haven’t seen all the movies, TV shows, and video games that make up its DNA will dig it. Nah, I bet that they’ll even sense that it’s so not its own thing.

And that’s my formulaic review of FREE GUY.

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PIXELS Is Lame, But Doesn’t Suck As Much As You’ve Heard

Opening today at a multiplex near all of us:

PIXELS (Dir. Chris Columbus, 2015)

So, PIXELS, the latest in a long line of crass comedies from Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions, is a typically lame offering, but it really doesn't suck as much as the majority of critics are saying.

I mean, it currently holds an awful 12% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. C’mon! It deserves at least 30-something percent. *

PIXELS scores a few points by trying a little harder than Sandler’s largely crappy output of late (the GROWN UP series, THAT’S MY BOY, BLENDED, etc.) and it has a pretty promising premise – aliens attack earth in the form of ‘80s video games – which does at times add up into some genuinely enjoyable dumb fun.

There may be dragging stretches between those instances of amusement, and tons of lame jokes litter the landscape along with the pixilated carnage, but as a throwaway summer popcorn picture it’s actually almost passable.

Sandler, Josh Gad, and Peter Dinklage play former ‘80s arcade champions, who we meet as kids played by the well cast Anthony Ippolito, Jacob Shinder and Andrew Bambridge, in an opening flashback set in 1982. We also meet Jared Riley as the kid version of Kevin James’ character, who’s not a great gamer but is able to score a Chewbacca mask from the Claw Game.

In the intervening years, Sandler’s Sam Brenner grows up to be a schlubby Geek Squad-style media center installation guy, while his best friend, James’ Will Cooper (or “Chewie” to his friends) has gone on to be elected President of the United States.

When Austrialia gets invaded by an alien force resembling the game Galaga™, James recruits Sandler to use his gaming skills, which involve recognizing patterns, to help the army defeat the 8-bit menace. Gad, now a conspiracy theory buff, and a mulleted Dinklage, in prison for criminal hacking, are also called upon and before long they’re all wearing uniforms identified as “Arcaders.”

Michelle Monaghan as Lt. Colonel Violet van Patten, Sandler’s obvious love interest from the get go, is skeptical of the crew until they take down Centipede® in a battle in London’s Hyde Park.

The big showpiece is the showdown with Pac-Man™ in New York City. The Arcaders take on the role of the ghosts via brightly colored cars with their names (Blinky, Inky, Pinky, and Clyde) on their license plates. Pac-Man is his old yellow, recognizable self, albeit ginormous, who shocks Sandler and his creator, Denis Akiyama as Toru Iwatani (the real Iwatani has a cameo as a repairman), by being “a bad guy.”

PIXELS takes the aliens recreating our old pop culture premise from GALAXY QUEST mixes it with the satirical yet nostalgic take on arcade classics from the Reagan era of WRECK-IT RALPH, and then wraps it all up in GHOST BUSTERS packing of having lovable, schlubby underdogs overcoming supernatural odds to save the world from a dangerously silly threat. Oh, and there’s an added splash of THE KING OF KONG in there too – the posturing of Dinklage’s Donkey Kong champion more than a little resembles the arrogant Billy Mitchell in that compelling gaming doc.

It should also be mentioned that there’s an episode of Futurama, “Raiders of the Lost Arcade,” that shares the same premise, but the real inspiration, which is credited, is the French animated short “Pixels.” Nearly every visual gag in the short is redone in the movie – watch it here.

Scripted by longtime Sandler screenwriting pal Tim Herlihy, PIXELS has a decently dopey tone to it. It doesn’t care whether its jokes land, or its plot mechanics are transparent, it just wants to fuck around on its huge playset with all the props and memories of the overgrown man-children in its audience.

Unfortunately there are so many missed opportunities with this material that it’s a shame that like somebody like the retro-meta-mastermind team of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (the 21 JUMP STREET movies, THE LEGO MOVIE) wasn’t hired to touch up the screenplay.

Like I said before, it’s pretty close to crappy (which could be said also of its cluttered cinematography), but not as interminable, soul crushing, or as painful as many critics are saying. It’s a mediocre attempt at a crowd pleaser that actually has some amusing moments. It just fits better into the “Sandler is so over” narrative that so many pop culture pundits have been selling lately to paint it as a big, stinky dud.

I can’t say I’d recommend it to anyone who’s not a big Sandler fan, or somebody who doesn’t say upfront that they like big, stupid movies, but if I were using a star rating system I’d give it two stars out of five for “doesn’t completely suck” (the other stars for the record: 1 star = “sucks,” 3 stars = “good,” 4 stars = “almost awesome,” and 5 stars = of course, “awesome”).

Oh, and I enjoyed the Q-Bert, and Max Headroom cameos too.

* The Rotten Tomatoes rating of 12% was what it was at when I originally wrote this review. It's now at 20%, so it's slowly inching it's way up as more reviews are posted. Maybe it'll make 30-something % yet.

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New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD: 3/5/13

The big new releases on Blu ray and DVD deal with video games and Nazis: WRECK-IT RALPH and the 20th Anniversary Limited Edition of SCHINDLER'S LIST.

WRECK-IT RALPH, which I preferred to the Best Animated Picture winner BRAVE, comes with a bunch of tasty special features including the featurettes “Bit By Bit: Creating The Worlds Of WRECK-IT RALPH” and “Disney Intermission: The Gamer's Guide To WRECK-IT RALPH” (hosted By Chris Hardwick), deleted & alternate scenes, the Oscar winning short film PAPERMAN, and video game commercials for Fix-It Felix Jr., Hero’s Duty And Sugar Rush. Be sure to read my review from when the film hit theaters last year here.

The new Blu ray edition of Steven Spielberg’s Oscar winning black and white epic SCHINDLER’S LIST doesn’t have any new extras on it, but I hear the transfer is stunning. Doubt I’ll get around to watching it anytime soon though.

The other notable films out today are Barry Levinson’s largely ignored horror film THE BAY (only on DVD), the RED DAWN remake that I haven't seen because I wasn’t a fan of the original, and the Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano’s acclaimed French comedy THE INTOUCHABLES, which is in my Netflix queue.

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A Worthwhile Retro Romp In WRECK-IT RALPH

WRECK-IT RALPH (Dir. Rich Moore, 2012)
          
It’s not the first time that the great John C. Reilly has been animated - Jake Kasdan’s WALK HARD featured Reilly’s Dewey Cox character dabbling in psychedelics with the Beatles bringing on a YELLOW SUBMARINE-style hallucinatory sequence (“I like being a trippy cartoon!”), and Reilly was the sole comic relief as a scared stitch-punk in Shane Acker’s dreary 2009 sci-fi CGI-concoction 9 - but in WRECK-IT RALPH, it’s the first time he’s been properly animated with such purpose.

Reilly lends his voice to the title character, an oafish villain in a Donkey Kong-ish video game called “Fix-It Felix Jr.,” who decides during his game’s thirtieth anniversary that he doesn’t want to be the bad guy anymore. 30 Rock’s Jack McBrayer, also appropriately animated, voices the games’ hero, who is constantly celebrated by the tenants of the apartment building for fixing what Ralph, uh, wrecks.

The game is located in the fictional Litwak's Arcade, alongside other parody/homages to classic ‘80s video games, such as the violent war game “Hero’s Duty,” and the seemingly set in Candyland go-cart game “Sugar Rush.” There are also many amusing cameos from real game characters, including Frogger, Q*Bert, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Clyde, the orange ghost from Pac-Man.

Told that he’d have to win a medal to be accepted by the residents of his game, Ralph leaves through the wires of “Fix-It Felix Jr.” to the arcade’s master power strip called Central Game Station, where all the various video game characters interact with one another after the establishment closes, in a TOY STORY style (not to mention the similarities to the world where cartoon characters live among us in WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?).

There’s also a bit of PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO happening like when its noticed that Ralph is missing from his game and the arcade manager (voiced by Ed O'Neill) puts up an out of order sign. Since this means that the videogame is broken and will be unplugged, Felix goes after Ralph.

In one of the funniest scenes, Ralph tries to get a medal in “Hero’s Duty,” ruled by the stern Sergeant Tamora Jean Calhoun (Jane Lynch), and succeeds despite how chaotically over the top the game is. Ralph exclaims: “When did video games become so violent and scary?!!?”

In the next game Ralph hits, “Sugar Rush,” his medal is stolen by Vanellope von Schweetz, voiced by comedienne Sarah Silverman, who's plagued with a programming code glitch which makes her as ostracized in her video game world as Ralph was in his.

Silverman's Vanellope has a persona tailored to her patented cute snarkiness, and her penchant for crude bathroom humor - her riffing on the name of the game “Hero’s Duty” (sounds like ‘doody,’ right?) gets some good mileage (“Why did the hero flush the toilet?' ‘Cuz it was his DUTY!”), and she and Reilly exude likable chemistry bouncing off each other in their exchanges, with both comical and emotional impact.

In several smaller parts that stand out, Mindy Kalling has a few choice moments as a racing rival of Silverman's, as does Alan Tudyk as King Candy (the film's real bad guy), and is that Skrillex putting in a cameo as the DJ at Fix-It Felix's 30th anniversary party? Why yes, it is.

The sprightly, inventive, and neatly nostalgic WRECK-IT RALPH is one of the few recent animated kid’s films that uses pop culture referencing to its advantage, with genuine affection towards its inspirations. When Reilly's Ralph realizes, and says touchingly, that ‘retro’ doesn’t necessarily mean outdated and unnecessary, it can mean that something’s “old but cool,” it’s obvious that director Moore (who helmed many classic Simpsons episodes), and screenwriters Phil Johnston (CEDAR RAPIDS), and Jennifer Lee honestly feel the same way.

Whether they grew up in the age of 8-bit, or have been weaned on the high resolution graphics that dominate the game world now, folks of all ages should take to the worthwhile romp that is WRECK-IT RALPH. 

It looks like Disney, whose 52nd feature-length animated film this is, has taken more than a few cues from Pixar (including having a charming animated short play before the movie - John Kahrs’ “Paperman”), and made, via a mixture of hand drawn and CGI, a much sharper and hipper film than their last few features (I barely remember TANGLED or THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG).

It’s good news indeed that the Magic Kingdom’s movie makers can still mazimize on a promising premise, get so many laughs and thrills out of it, all the while poignantly pulling the heartstrings. It goes a long way to make up for the kind of crap that too often passes for family entertainment these days.

*Cough* “Hotel Transylvania” *Cough*.

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