Anthony's Film Review - Free Guy (2021)

If you like video games, you'll enjoy this video game-themed movie...

Free Guy is a movie geared especially toward video game enthusiasts, with a premise that can be summed up like this: "Grand Theft Auto meets Wreck-It Ralph." Let me explain.

Grand Theft Auto is a game where the player roams through an open-world urban landscape, completes missions oriented in criminal activity, finds other cool things to do, and does whatever is desired (within the limits of what is programmed). Besides the player-controlled character (PC), the virtual city is dotted with many non-player-controlled characters (NPC) to give the setting a more lifelike look. The PC can ignore, interact with, or even kill the NPCs. Essentially, the PC is the focus and the NPCs are just in the background. Now, if you play Grand Theft Auto Online, there are tons of PCs in the game simultaneously.

The movie Free Guy centers on a fictional GTA-like video game called Free City. All of the PCs are easily identifiable by the glasses they wear. In contrast, none of the NPCs wear glasses. Plus, while the PCs engage in violent street crime action, the NPCs go about their quiet lives in whatever roles they're assigned. For example, when a Free City bank gets robbed, all of the bank employees, including Ryan Reynolds as Guy, lie on the ground and do so with the feeling of just going through the motions. In fact, even if NPCs are very close to the violence happening, they'll ignore it and move on.

Now, you may recall the Disney animated film Wreck-It Ralph, in which a video game character is tired of playing the same assigned role and decides to break free, with consequences for the rest of the game world. That's what happens in Free Guy, too. During a bank robbery, Guy steals a robber PC's glasses, and once he puts it on, he sees things he never knew existed, like mission markers, power-up items, and player stats. He begins to do things he never did before, and he is filled with excitement. He also develops a crush on a female PC named Molotovgirl.

That said, there is one notable difference between Free Guy and Wreck-It Ralph. (Note: Free Guy was made by 20th Century Studios, which Disney now owns, so technically, I'm comparing two Disney movies.) In Wreck-It Ralph, characters in the real world outside the video game are shown, but with limited screen time. In Free Guy, however, scenes of the real world coexist with scenes of the virtual world in a near 1:1 ratio. The real-world plotline centers on three game developers played by Jodie Comer, Joe Keery, and Utkarsh Ambudkar. They are part of the Free City development team, whose routine work in maintenance of the Free City online gaming experience takes a weird turn. They see the NPC Guy becoming a PC and discuss what is going on with this apparent game glitch. In addition, members of the Free City player community are reacting to this on YouTube and social media, triggering what is called the Blue Shirt Guy phenomenon.

While many gamers love what is happening, one person clearly does not: Antwan (played by Taika Waititi), the main designer of Free City and practically the face of that game franchise. He will stop at nothing to put an end to this madness. The reason for this may not be clear right away, but once the three developers I mentioned above start suspecting something very wrong, it becomes a race against time to expose Antwan for what he has really done before Antwan successfully covers his tracks. I will say that the character of Antwan is a somewhat over-the-top caricature of a villain, where we just have to accept that this character is the antagonist without seeing much of his origin. Oh well. At least it gives the protagonists something to fight against.

I do give this movie positive marks. However, it's mainly based on the second half of the plot. This is where a startling revelation is presented, and the story is given a jolt, a real jump-start if you will. The movie could've remained a simplistic fun romp all the way through. Instead, things take an interesting turn in the middle and, all of a sudden, you want to see what will happen. It's because the stakes are high for everyone. What happens until the end will impact not only everyone in the virtual world of Free City but also every member of the Free City developer and gamer community in the real world.

Going back to the Wreck-It Ralph comparison again, let me address some stuff about video game references. In Wreck-It Ralph, the title character meets characters from actual video games in cameo appearances, like Zangief from the Street Fighter games, but ultimately, they are just cameos. In Free Guy, there are also video game references, but they are generally fewer and more subtle. For example, one action sequence features brief uses of the portal gun from the video game Portal and the gravity gun from Half-Life 2. Also, gamer YouTube videos in this movie include quick clips from actual games. (Is that Red Dead Redemption 2 in one of those shots?)

Free Guy is an action comedy that starts out as fun and silly in a simple way, before getting a little more creative and giving us a reason to follow along until the end. This is one of those movies where the needle on my 1-to-10 scale moves over the course of the movie, such that I have to determine the rough average. Here, the needle started at a 7, then slowly inched upward until it ended up somewhere between 7.5 and 8. In the end, I've decided to give this movie a generous 8 out of 10 stars, just based on rounding up to the nearest whole number of stars. It's good enough that I want to see more video game-oriented movies, whether based on real games or fictional ones. Just make sure they're entertaining. That's all I ask.

Anthony's Rating:

For more information about Free Guy, visit the Internet Movie Database.