Free Guy has an easy-to-understand premise that can attract both Gen Z’ers and older generations to the theater: what if a non playable character (NPC) in a video game suddenly gained consciousness? Helmed by Ryan Reynolds, it starts off on a fun note before circling round familiar jokes before course correcting for the typical ‘little guy stands up against a mega corporation’ ending. That’s sort of ironic, considering that this movie is coming from one of the biggest monolithic corporations in the world, who took over this film when it absorbed another large mega corporation.
Guy (Ryan Reynolds) wakes up every morning with infectious glee, says hi to his goldfish, dresses in the same blue shirt and tie and goes to work at the ‘bank’ at Free City, which is a multiplayer GTA-esque game. At the bank, he banters with guard Buddy (Lil Ren Howery) during the brief respites they get between getting robbed by players. One day, he sees a player named Molotov Girl (Jodie Comer) and he ends up breaking out of his usual routine. He gains access to one of the sunglasses worn by players that reveals the game’s heads up display. Soon, he meets Molotov Girl again, who instructs him to level up so that they can assault a specific stash house together. Guy takes on only the positive missions and soon he earns a viral following worldwide, where he is known as Blue Shirt Guy.
When you think about it, Free Guy is like a store brand version of bigger, more successful films like Ready Player One, The Truman Show and even The Matrix. Still, it has inventive sequences, such as when two game developers pursue Guy through a building and they take a shortcut that creates stairs out of thin air. The action scenes are kinetic and reminiscent of the madness you see in GTA Online and Fortnite.
There is a subplot where Millie Rusk, the real world woman behind Molotov Girl, tries to find evidence that game publisher Antwan (Taika Waititi) stole the game code from her passion project that she built with Keys (Joe Keery). Keys now works as a lowly developer in Soonami, the company that acquired his game, and he secretly helps Millie investigate the issue.
Free Guy takes a detour once Guy finds out he is a NPC in a video game, and later once again when the servers are rebooted and Guy loses all of his memories. Somehow, a kiss from Millie jolts all those memories loose and they are back on track to save the sliver of Millie’s original game from getting erased.
The boilerplate epic climax mostly works, as Guy literally has to fight a beefed up version of himself named Dude as he races against time to reach the last remaining island from the original game. Free Guy references two major Disney franchises, complete with the soundtrack cues and a surprise cameo.
Reynolds goes against type by playing a charming, earnest, starry-eyed character as opposed to smart-ass heroes like Deadpool. Jodie Comer also more than holds her own. Keery and Howery turn in decent supporting performances.
Free Guy is an entertaining blockbuster that is already on its way to becoming a franchise, as Disney has expressed interest in working on the sequel. Again, this is ironic, since the antagonist goes on a villainous rant at one point where he rails about people only wanting sequels and IPs. Well, that’s how new IPs turn out. If they are successful enough, they get sequels and become franchises, often as bloated as the ones that came before them.
At least Free Guy hasn’t gone that far yet. Let’s hope it retains its charm over the next few iterations.