Space Net's All New Review: Free Guy Starring Ryan Reynolds

Ryan Reynolds is a national treasure. I couldn’t start this review off any other way. Spending many hours of my life perusing the internet, from time to time I’ll stumble across a stray YouTube comment or Tweet, usually in the vein of "All I see is Deadpool." For a while, this wasn’t a statement I bothered arguing about. It was pretty true. He played Deadpool so amazingly that the general public couldn’t separate the character from the actor, and it seemed like he didn’t really mind playing into that. I thought this might be something of a problem for Reynolds until... I watched "Free Guy."

This film is something I dare say could be considered a classic in the coming years. We knew Reynolds could do dark, raunchy action/comedy. We knew he could do it very, very well. What I didn’t know was that he could take all the same elements fans loved about Deadpool and somehow place them on the opposite side of the emotional spectrum with ease, giving us yet another iconic character. If "Deadpool" is a pitch-black comedy, "Free Guy" is its light-bright twin in all the best ways. Before I go any further, seeing as this is my first article for SpaceNetwork Media, I think I should advise you, the reader. Do not ever come to these reviews expecting a play-by-play or synopsis of the film being spoken about. That’s what Wikipedia is for. I’m simply here to tell you why this film made me feel compelled enough to write about it and possibly make you interested enough to watch it. Why? Because I fucking love films. And great films, art, music, literature, etc., are meant to be shared.

I’ve always felt that good acting must begin with exceptional writing. If what’s on the page is great, all a director has to do is guide the actor. If the actor happens to be extremely gifted, all a director ends up having to do is observe and facilitate. Ladies and gentlemen, this might just be the case with "Free Guy". Many action/comedies tend to fail at the art of pacing. Jokes don’t always land. Action scenes are too spaced out. Plot lines generally fall in the lane of average. This film checks off none of those boxes. The jokes always land. The action and the comedy were cut together so well that there was never a dull moment. And the plot line... the fucking plot line. Writing at that level is much like common sense. It’s not something one can be taught. You either have it or you don’t. Now I know I’ve given Reynolds much praise, but he definitely had quite a supporting cast to back him up. I can’t imagine it’d always be easy playing opposite someone as charismatic as Reynolds, but Lil Rel Howery, who killed it playing the role of "Buddy", the best friend of Reynolds’ character, didn’t miss a beat. One of the most moving moments of the film comes from an interaction between Howery and Reynolds over self-sacrifice, and now I need to see these guys on camera together more often (Hollywood, if you see this, give us a buddy cop movie starring those two; there is no way it could fail; their chemistry is impeccable). An honorable mention goes

to Stranger Things alumni Joe Keery. Personally, I think his character was severely underused, but to be fair with the screen time, he did have the guy for sure do what he had to do. My only gripe with this film is the antagonist, "Antwan," played by Taika Waititi. If I had only one word to describe him, it would be "underwritten." Once we reach the third act of the film and he becomes the primary concern, you realize he’s very hard to take seriously for two reasons. One: He’s very much not intimidating. Two: He wasn’t in the first two acts of the film nearly enough for us to feel like he could pose any serious threat to our protagonist. In the last 30 or so minutes of the film, he is quite literally destroying the main character’s world, and not once (at least for me) did I feel like he would actually succeed in doing so due to the lack of his presence throughout my viewing experience. With that being said, it is forgivable, and don’t get me wrong, Waititi is a great actor. He even managed to get a few genuine laughs out of me, despite some of his lines being straight up corny (although I’d like to think that was the point). A good villain is something I can always appreciate, so when that falls to the wayside, I can’t help but feel slightly disappointed. I’d even go as far as to say that if Waititi’s character was a tad more fleshed out, we could have had yet another iconic pop culture villain on our hands. I rate this film with 4 stars out of 5.