Free Guy

SnarkAI Score: 50/100

tldr:

it seems to be an average, unremarkable film with some notable flaws. The critic seems disappointed with the movie's lack of originality and poor execution of its premise. Additionally, the unrealistic and illogical aspects of the plot and poor ending make it less appealing. However, the critic does acknowledge that some scenes and elements of the movie are enjoyable and well done, which prevents it from being a complete failure.

Our Scores are generated by SnarkAI's analysis of our reviewer's writing. The tldr sumary is drafted by SnarkAI based on that review. All Images are AI generated based on the reviewers descriptions of scenes.

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Given that we've had Ready Player One, Matrix 4, and even the new Jumanji movies, Free Guy feels incredibly lazy.

It could have been a smart critique of the entitlement of gun ownership in the US through the lens of video games, with owners seeing themselves as players. Instead, it offers a very boomer understanding of video games. The lack of a clear genre of game, like Matrix and Jumanji offer, is a real weakness to Free Guy. Is it Fortnite, GTA, or something else? It seems to be some kind of MMO that old filmmakers have read about in newspapers. Being the good guy has never been considered, apparently, even though people have done weirder things than no-violence runs of Skyrim.

The director originally turned it down as he's not a gamer and believed that this film should be directed by a hardcore gamer. But when Reynolds came knocking, he, unfortunately, changed his mind. Because he was right. This should have been directed by someone who cared about the medium.

The entire setup of the tech in the game is nonsense, complete gibberish, but I can ignore that in a good film. I mean, Matrix's humans as batteries were always daft, but you roll with it because it's thematically great. (But one server room in one office building, the lag on that game must be monstrous!)

"Security, kick this punk out! But let him keep his laptop with all our code and admin rights to the servers. Because of reasons...." Ugh. So dumb.

There's one scene that is just Ready Player One with its cheesy nostalgia.

The ending is cringy.