Free Guy review: Largely entertaining but shambolic Truman Show rip-off

A big, effects-laden new movie that skates by on star Ryan Reynolds’ charm will remind you of an acclaimed classic 1990s film.

MILD SPOILERS FOR FREE GUY (but it’s not really a movie that’s hinged on plot twists).

Picture this. A good-natured man moves towards an artificial horizon, his journey broadcast to people watching the world over who are rooting for him to succeed over a corporation.

Meanwhile, a manipulative god-creator tells a lackey to throw everything at him, trying to stop him from discovering what’s on the other side.

Sounds like The Truman Show, right?

It sure does. But it’s Free Guy, the new movie starring Ryan Reynolds as a non-playable character in an open world video game who suddenly gains sentience.

Free Guy is like The Truman Show for the 21st century.

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The similarities between Free Guy and The Truman Show are vast – in Free Guy, Reynolds’ character Guy is even “woken” up by a woman from the real, outside world.

It’s the 21st century version of Peter Weir’s story, updating reality TV to online gaming, with added dashes of The Matrix, Wreck-it-Ralph and The Lego Movie. Oh, and just to be clear, this is not a reboot, for all of its obvious references, Free Guy is not in any way affiliated with The Truman Show.

Maybe it’s unfair to call it a rip-off because in many ways, Free Guy is inventive and the tone is wildly different, but it does feel like a bit of a rip-off. It’s a mostly fun rip-off, but a rip-off, nonetheless.

Free Guy is Jodie Comer’s first lead role in a movie. Picture: Alan Markfield/20th Century Fox

Guy is a bank teller in Free City. He wakes up every morning, says hello to his goldfish and goes off to work with his best friend Buddy (Lil Rel Howery).

He says he lives in paradise, and everything is awesome – but resists the urge to break into song – despite the fact the bank is held up twice a day and his hometown is burdened with criminal activity committed by the special people wearing sunglasses.

The sunglasses people are real-lifers’ gaming avatars and Guy’s world is a Grand Theft Auto-esque video game. He just doesn’t know it. But then Molotov Girl (Jodie Comer) walks by, humming Mariah Carey’s Fantasy and it’s as if he’s awakened, discovering everything is not as it seems.

In the real world, Molotov Girl is Milly, a programmer who has a lawsuit against the company which owns Free City, run by the douchebaggiest of bros, Antwan (Taika Waititi).

Milly is convinced the evidence she needs that Antwan stole her code is locked in a secret level in Free City and Guy becomes her ally.

Guy is only just realising his world is kinda weird.

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The premise is intriguing and even though the story beats are thin, Free Guy is largely entertaining. The pacing works and some of its action sequences are visually absorbing while the performances from Reynolds, Comer and Stranger Things’ Joe Keery are charismatic enough to carry it along.

But it’s also a big old mess. It’s a movie that’s more parts than the sum of its parts, unable to decide if it’s the action-comedy on the box or if it’s actually a stealthy rom-com.

The impression that it doesn’t cohere stems from the fact that it’s drawing on so many things, while proclaiming that it’s a fresh idea. That devotion to originality is baked into the story’s DNA even though the filmmakers, including director Shawn Levy and screenwriters Matt Lieberman and Zak Penn, don’t practice what they preach.

(L-R) Taika Waititi, Utkarsh Ambudkar and Joe Keery in the ‘real-life’ part of Free Guy. Picture: Alan Markfield/20th Century Fox

At one point, Antwan is challenged to back an original concept instead of forging ahead with a sequel, leading to a cynical tirade about what fool would forego the money to be made from existing intellectual property.

And this is the villain talking so you’re supposed to think IP is a lazy cash grab devoid of creativity. Free Guy is being released by Disney, the studio most reliant on exploiting existing IP.

While Free Guy was in development at Fox before the studio was acquired by Disney, the house of mouse’s IP ends up jammed in there anyway, with two glaring references to Disney’s most lucrative franchises.

Despite its undeniably enjoyable and rollicking nature, it’s all a bit shambolic.

Rating: 2.5/5

Free Guy is in cinemas now (excluding lockdown areas)

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