(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . DVD review: Free Guy [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-11-22 The tragedy of the recent election has some of us wondering if maybe we’re just non-player characters in some cruel video game, getting stomped on and tossed around for the entertainment of the players. Though dealing with certain timely issues such as artificial intelligence and monetary inflation, Free Guy (2021) for the most part works as an escapist action comedy, and probably most viewers have taken it as such. Free Guy is a movie about a video game character in the video game Free City who becomes self-aware. The premise was interesting enough for me to check it out from the library, but not interesting enough for me to watch before the due date. If I had known the plot involved a lawsuit over intellectual property, I probably would have watched it a lot sooner. From the public library, I had also checked out Air and The Inspection. I watched Air first and The Inspection next, and returned them both before the due date. I also wrote reviews of Air and The Inspection fairly soon after watching those movies. Although the character Ryan Reynolds plays in Free Guy is extremely important to the story, the true protagonist of the movie is Millie (Jodie Comer), who goes by the username “molotovgirl” in the Free City game. I haven’t played Grand Theft Auto, so if anyone reading this knows better please correct me, but Free City seems to be a game in that same vein. Millie appears to others to be addicted to the game, memorizing a lot of the lines said by the non-player characters (NPCs) and staying at a coffee shop with her laptop until closing time. But the real reason for her playing the game is that she’s looking for hard evidence that douchebag Soonami CEO Antwan (Taika Waititi) stole from a video game Millie and her platonic friend Keys (Joe Keery) created a few years ago. The earlier game, Life Itself, was about the NPCs evolving as people through Millie’s artificial intelligence algorithms. It’s not explained what kind of artificial intelligence this is, like if it’s a large language model like ChatGPT. That earlier game gained somewhat of a cult following, but it was nowhere near as popular as Free City has become. Guy (Ryan Reynolds) has no more jumps in a scene from Free Guy. Keys created a character destined to long for the woman of his dreams but never find her, and the woman of that character’s dreams happens to be a lot like Millie. That character became Guy (Ryan Reynolds) in Free City. A lot of this information is pushed off to the end of the first act. The screenwriters wanted to front-load the violent nature of Free City and the explanation that only the actual players, not the NPCs, wear sunglasses. Guy is fairly happy in his life, despite the fact that his bank account is always a few dollars short of the amount he needs for a really cool pair of sneakers (which I thought look like blue Air Jordans on my first viewing). And this even though he works at the bank, where his whole job is to stamp deposit slips and lie on the ground as the game’s players rob the bank every couple of hours during business hours. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen! I’m already coming up with names for the children we’re going to have!” “Yeah, about that...” The only thing that frustrates Guy is the feeling that he will never find the woman of his dreams. So, when “molotovgirl” shows up in Free City with a certain song playing through her headphones, Guy immediately knows he’s found love at long last. Now he must do everything he can to follow up with this mysterious woman. Guy doesn’t know that “molotovgirl” is actually Millie, a woman in the real world, since he doesn’t even know what the real world is. But he does figure out that the sunglasses hold the key to a relationship with her. So at the next robbery at the bank (which he doesn’t have to wait for too long), he grabs a pair of sunglasses off a player and becomes aware of numerous power-ups strewn throughout the game. Since Guy is very familiar with Free City, he’s able to level up quickly, though of course his main goal is to find Millie. Thus he runs afoul of game moderators Keys and Mouser (Utkarsh Ambudkar). At first they treat Guy like any other cheater in the game, but they quickly realize that they’re going to need unconventional tactics to rein Guy in. And as Guy becomes more popular with the game’s players, being referred to as “Blue Shirt Guy,” the option of simply deleting him from the game altogether risks major backlash from the players. Guy also catches Millie’s attention, and she realizes that he might just have the key to prove that Antwan stole intellectual property from Life Itself to create Free City. Free Guy also works as a romantic comedy, even though it lacks several elements of that genre. There’s also the science fiction aspect. Guy loves Millie because he’s been programmed to. Can Millie really fall in love with a computer program? And can Guy help Millie find the evidence she needs before Antwan deletes it? I would give the movie ★★★★☆ plus a half star, but on account of the voice-over at the beginning, I deduct that half star. I half-suspect someone at a focus group screening was confused by that, so they added in a voice-over to explain it. Although it is not unusual for DVDs to not include special features these days, I still deduct a full star for this omission, so I give the DVD ★★★☆☆. Free Guy is rated PG-13 by the MPA “for strong fantasy violence throughout, language and crude/suggestive references.” There’s been talk of a sequel. I’m not sure it’s necessary, but I can imagine plenty of directions it could go and be a worthwhile addition. I can also imagine directions it could go and not be worthwhile. The screenplay will make the difference between Free Guy 2 being more like Empire Strikes Back or more like Speed 2: Cruise Control. By the way, I do like Matrix Reloaded a lot more than most people. That’s a movie that suggests some directions Free Guy 2 could go. We do have some power-ups in this game of life, without having to take something away from another player. Understanding what those power-ups are and how and when to use them, that’s the tough part. Unfortunately, unlike in a video game, some mistakes can be irreversible. P.S. If you go see Wicked tonight, please write a review and send a message to Movie Review Group so we can reblog it. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/11/22/2227107/-DVD-review-Free-Guy?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/