Review: Free Guy

Shawn Levy’s action-comedy, Free Guy, is about a character named Guy, a background character, or NPC (non-playable character), in a video game called Free City, a game full of explosions, violence, chaos, and an unknown plot. As an NPC, Guy lives the same day over and over again. He wakes up, greets his fish, puts on the same blue shirt, tie, and khakis, eats his sugar-filled cereal, gets the same coffee order from the local coffee shop, and goes to his job at the bank, which gets held up by Free City’s glasses-donning “heroes” for them to earn money. He finishes his days by getting beers with his best friend Buddy at the beach and does all of it with a chipper smile on his face. Guy doesn’t matter in the world of Free City and all the people who play Free City don’t think twice about him when they play unless they want to rob him or beat him up for no apparent reason other than to get a few bonus points.

But one day, Guy sees a woman that changes everything. He doesn’t know her name, only that she rocks the sunglasses of the game’s heroes. After a brief encounter with this woman, Guy thinks that his whole life could be different, a thought that has never crossed his mind or any other NPC’s mind. The following day, Guy wears a different shirt, orders a different coffee, and stops a robbery at his bank rather than complying, allowing him to get the sunglasses that are worn by the game’s heroes, in an attempt to talk to this dream girl. 

Soon after, Guy becomes a sensation in Free City, as the characters and players of the game have no idea what is going on and how Guy has gone from irrelevant background character to Free City hero. As Guy’s popularity grows, he becomes closer to his dream girl, whose video game character name is Molotov Girl and whose real name is Millie. As the two get close, Molotov Girl reveals to Guy that he is a character in a video game and that she is part of the real world where the creator of the game, Antoine, is trying to destroy it because it might include some code that was created by Millie and Keys, her friend and an employee of Antoine’s. Guy must then go from being nothing but a background character to being a hero and saving the people of Free City and Millie’s code.

Despite the original concept of the movie, Free Guy doesn’t work on any level. Incredibly long and overly bloated with characters and subplots, the general simplicity of a background video game character wanting more out of his life and starts becoming a hero is a good enough plot to make for a fun and entertaining movie. But Levy, along with screenwriters Matt Lieberman and Zak Penn, stuff the film with too much non-sense and not enough world-building. I would have rather seen the world-building of the game and learn the rules of what is happening and how everything works than get a half-assed love story and an uninteresting real-world plot. The laughs are few and far between and the action is chaotic and messy. I did enjoy Jodie Comer’s performance as Molotov Girl and had a great time with Taika Waititi’s over-the-top performance as Antoine, but that’s about it.

The biggest issue I had with Free Guy was the casting of Ryan Reynolds in the lead role as Guy. This isn’t a knock on Reynolds’s talent as an actor, but playing a “background character” just doesn’t work. Reynolds is a hilarious, good-looking movie star, he isn’t a background character. Despite all of its subplots and characters, Free Guy is an underdog story about how a nobody can become a hero. With Reynolds as the nobody, there is no suspense or intrigue that he’d become the hero and save the day. He’s already a superhero as Deadpool and has starred in several action movies in his career. You know he’s going to be able to kick ass and you know he’s going to win the heart of the girl. As much as I like Reynolds as a screen presence, I was never invested in his journey because I could never fully believe him as this character.

I don’t usually give casting advice when writing my reviews, but in a case where it would have changed the whole dynamic of the movie (probably) for the better, this might be one of the few times I do it. For the role of Guy, I have two suggestions: the first suggestion would be to cast a great character actor in the role, like a James Badge Dale, or Steve Buscemi, or John Ortiz, a great actor who is kind of in the “background” of Hollywood. This would make their story of going from nobody to hero far more interesting. Of course, Hollywood, particularly 20th Century or Disney, would never cast a character actor to lead a $100+ million blockbuster, so if they wanted to go with someone who’s more bankable yet would be far more believable as a background character who becomes a hero, they should have cast Adam Sandler or Andy Samberg. Both are great comedic actors, with Samberg bringing the similarly dry humor that Reynolds brings, and both would convey more believable background characters who go from zero to hero.  Sandler has made a career as an everyman and Samberg could have easily slid into this role. Both of them are great actors and the story arc of Guy would have worked better with them as Guy.

But, that’s a different world. In this one, we got Ryan Reynolds starring as a nobody in a messy, bloated action-comedy that wastes a really interesting premise. 

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