Free Guy is Great, actually! | Big Daddy Digest and Review

Introducing: Free Guy BD Digest and Review

So, I was kind of excited that after getting to write a piece about video game movies, which you can read here, I would get the chance to take what I had considered with me to one such movie just a few days later. Yes, that movie is Free Guy. Now, I was going to see this movie no matter what because I do find Ryan Reynolds quite charming and am willing to give things he is in a chance (unless the trailers do make it look really godawful). By the time that I went, though, I was actually excited since the reviews were coming out as “better than I expected”. So, let’s talk about Free Guy and what this new flick about video games has to offer in this digest and semi review.

Into the Game

Okay, so, I won’t get into spoilers here, but let’s go over some basic plot! As you’ve likely surmised from the trailers, Guy is a video game NPC in a Grand Theft Auto Online styled game who starts to realize that things are a bit different than they initially appear in his world. In the world of Free City, they are the regular folk (who are the NPCs) and there are, “The Sunglasses People”, the shorthand the NPCs use for the players, who are able to get away with just about anything. Guy’s journey starts when he spots a player who is his absolute dream girl and in trying to follow her, accidentally kills a player and takes their sunglasses, awakening to the reality of just what the players see (though he doesn’t actually realize he’s in a video game, but more realizes that his home is gamified). He tries to help the mysterious MolotovGirl out, but she rebuffs him, saying his level is too low for him to be of any use to her. Guy is determined to get that level up though, and starts to do so in an unconventional way, by being a decent guy and protecting the NPCs from the abuse of players.

MolotovGirl is actually Millie, a former game developer who has a lawsuit against Soonami, the games studio that develops Free City, believing that they used the code from a game she and her development partner, Keys, had created and partnered with Soonami to release. Though that never came to be. The game being a title called Life Itself, which was all about watching an artificially intelligent world grow and develop on its own. Keys is actually working at Soonami now and keeps saying he can’t help Millie, but, well… you know he’s going to because it’s obvious he’s had a bit of a thing for her for a long time. Eventually they start to notice that Guy is a little different and start to realize some things about Free City too. But they’re going to need to move quick, because Free City 2 launches this week.

Our Cast

I have to say, that every character here is intensely likeable. Ryan Reynolds’s Guy is like if you crossed Emmet from the Lego movie with Buddy the elf and sprinkled a little Truman from Truman show on top. I’ve seen some people say that it doesn’t work for him, but I think it really does. The boundless optimism that he gives off is really sweet and as we see him getting more involved in what’s going on, the comedy really works. Jodie Comer plays Millie to really great effect. At first you think it’s just going with the stock bad loner girl bit, but it becomes clear that that is a bit of a front and online persona, giving way to a much more faceted creative who feels deeply betrayed by the thought of her work being trapped in a game it is not meant for. 

Joe Keery as Keys was perhaps my favorite character, but maybe that’s because I’m a sucker for the trope of the jaded person rediscovering their passion for something and I also find Keery to be a charming actor. The one thing I wished we had gotten more concretely about Keys is why he is working at Soonami. There are some sort of implications that let you draw your own conclusion, but if there was a more concrete reason, it must have slipped over my head.

However, one of the stars of the entire thing for me was Antwan, head of Soonami, played to excellent effect by Taika Waititi. I knew Waititi could be a lot of fun as an actor after his turn as Imaginary Friend Hitler in Jojo Rabbit, but he really turned it out for this one in the best of ways. Antwan is a complete jerk. Everything you fear a game developer to be, he is. Single-mindedly focused on the sequel launch, which I am sure you can tell becomes a problem for our heroes when it looks like Millie might get in the way of that.

The Devil is in the Details

So, the movie really isn’t about the game itself. We’re not diving deep into the Free City lore, it’s just a setting for our story to play out in for some over the top action scenes, comedy, and stuff like that. So, I’m not going to really question how this game is somehow the biggest thing in the world, to the point where everyone knows what’s going on with it and Guy is able to become a sensation for his in game action. That’s just something we kind of have to hand wave as suspension of disbelief because, ya know, it’s a movie. That’s not the details that we are meant to dwell on.

What I do dwell on is that fact that there were at least a small group on the production team who have an affinity for gaming. There’s just details here that I don’t think someone who wasn’t into it would think to put in. Like, I can tell that Free City is a game that’s had a lot of cross promotion and such in the past. If you look really closely at one point, there’s an item labeled “Blatant Product Placement”. The Portal Gun and Gravity Gun are used by some characters. There’s even the use of a movie weapon that I won’t mention because it’ll spoil the best cameo in the movie. There’s other things too, though. Like how the players in the background are always doing things that are interesting. At one point Guy is at an ATM and there’s a player jumping around in the background in what is a clear attempt to glitch through a wall.

The one thing that was kind of distracting when it came to these references, though, was the way that they use real life Twitch streamers and YouTubers to show how things in game are being noticed in the real world. If it had happened just once, fine, I can deal, but the fact that they popped up multiple times started to become a distraction, especially in the climax. Or maybe I was just annoyed by the guy behind me who kept going “It’s Ninja!” after he showed up for the first time.

SPOILER TALK AHEAD

Alright, now’s the time to get into spoiler talk, so skip this section if you’re not interested in seeing that.

Alright, so there is some romance here, and I can see how some people would think it’s rushed or poorly paced or all that, but it was an aspect that I really liked. You see, Guy is actually a love letter to Millie from Keys. He was a character that was designed for Life Itself that was always searching for his dream girl and Keys based that dream girl on Millie, the person he was working with everyday. As such, Guy is absolutely head over heels for her, but so is Keys. Obviously we expect some tired love triangle out of this, or even the idea of Millie maybe falling for an AI, but the way it’s resolved was perfectly satisfactory and… kinda sweet in my opinion. Millie and Keys have great chemistry, though, so I was always kind of rooting for them.

There was actually a little more commentary on the games industry than I expected wrapped up in Antwan. There’s some great details about him being more into sequels than new IP and his obsession with the launch of the new game manifests really great side comments. Perhaps my favorite detail of this that isn’t even really plot relevant is the way that it’s mentioned that he has lied to fans about backwards compatibility with items from the first game.

There was one plot point that kind of bothered me near the end. You see, Guy kisses Millie, but Keys mentions that there isn’t an option for that in the game. Fair enough, just more evidence that he’s not actually a player, right? Well, the problem is that there is a point where Millie kisses Guy for a pivotal moment, something that she should not be able to do. She’s very clearly the one that initiates it, too, which is why it really stood out to me. It’s not movie ruining by any stretch, but it stands out in a bad way. This is similar to when Antwan starts destroying the servers one by one and it takes out different parts of the game world one by one. I don’t think that’s how it would actually work, but whatever, I’ll let it slide.

Last thing is that it is a little weird that after this real AI was discovered there wasn’t more of a deal made of that. Like, if it really is as complicated as it seems, Millie and Keys should have some big awards or something rolling in, but nope, nothing like that and no discussion of the impact that Guy could really create. But, I recognize that it’s not that kind of movie. This isn’t some in depth sci-fi. It’s a lighthearted comedy adventure flick.

Go see it Y’all!

Overall, this is one that I really liked and I can see it definitely becoming part of my movie collection as soon as it gets a physical release. Yeah, there might be some bits of it that are a little off if you think about it too much towards the back half, but it’s still a lot of fun if you let yourself get swept up in the ride of it all. I would definitely call it my favorite movie that I have seen in theaters this year. Admittedly, that isn’t too many, given the pandemic and all, but I still feel like it would rank highly in a normal year.

It’s definitely worth checking out if you’re invested in gaming as a hobby. There’s a lot of good sight gags and action derived from the use of video game logic and what they can get away with in a digital world that makes it worth the price of admission alone. And that’s before you get to how this movie has a really sincere core to it.