Free guy review

 

Director: Shawn Levy

Aww... I was looking forward to this movie... I didn't really like it. I mean, it was alright and if I turned my brain off I probably could have just enjoyed the action, the awesome CGI and the few actually funny jokes here and there. But... I guess my expectations were just a little too high. The story base idea was awesome. NPC becoming a bit more sentient and falling in love. The whole thing was just a bit too devoid of reality to enjoy. 

I'll simply list the things I didn't really like about the movie.

• Humorless cheap jokes.

Most jokes felt so cheap and cliched. I understand they wanted to appeal to gamers, so they had a few gamer moves, like tea-bagging and jumping around everywhere, that brought about a few chuckles. Other jokes, like having a streamer living in mom's house and complaining about cleaning his 'socks' was probably funny for children and teens (mind you that probably was the target audience). Otherwise, for the most parts, none of the jokes were memorable, or very funny. 

• Poorly written characters

Taika Waititi's character was written so... hmm... well I guess 'cringe' is the only word I can think of to describe it, that it didn't really end up being 'funny'. His over the top acting really did not align with any realistic characters in the game development that I've seen. Like I get it, he's supposed to be a character that thinks he's cool, but everyone hates him because he's not actually cool. That's supposed to be the joke. We're supposed to laugh at him. I guess I'm just out of touch... I just... didn't really find it funny much.

Background characters were just all weird in-between being wall-flowers and an actual impactful character, like Mouser had more potential to be a memorable character, but nope. In fact, there were just way too many famous background characters that no one actually stood out to be awesome. John Cena bit was funny I guess? Jack sceptic eye, I knew so I had a "hey its, _____" moment. But those were really it. Buddy was the only cool side character I can think of but his character was so one-dimensional and plot driven, that he wasn't a good NPC or an actual sentient being like they tried to portray. 

• People acting... not like people? Not aligned with reality? I'm not good with words

This is were the misalignment between reality and fiction became so wide that it was hard to enjoy. I mean, I'm a human, I like thinking of realistic human reactions towards a situation. I have no idea why they thought, 'oh every news would talk about good guy right?? Youtubers and stuff as well.' I just... don't get it. There's good characters in games all the time. Good NPCs as well.

I also don't get why they thought everyone would start loving NPCs and just like watching them... It's not what games are about. Yes, we don't have to kill them, but we don't just watch them. Even in Sims people have made pools without an exit to kill them off since the beginning. This is not human behavior. In fact, we have the animalistic instinct within us to want to be a strong dominant creature, that there will be heaps of people wanting to kill these 'NPC's that are sentient or whatever. 

• Computer and programming. This is how it works... right?

I haven't learnt much programming. But even I knew that... this is just not how computers, programming works... Like one or 2 of those features, I would've been like, "oh it's just a part of the show" and laugh it off, but when they're doing something like making a bridge out of a building... or breaking servers and the bridge starts to collapse?? or NPC's just all getting sentient without overloading the server data... it's just... what?? And no just, 'delete the character file' anymore. They have to send in another macho Ryan Reynold character to combat it instead.

sigh... I don't know... 

• Seemingly forced on romance...

I guess since they can't really Date off Molotov girl and Guy, so Key's will hint he was in love since the beginning and Millie just happened to not know and just ship them together at the end. It just seemed a bit forced and it just makes it less enjoyable. Especially since we're never going to find out what happens to Guy in the end. Just live in the never ending NPC world??

Anyway, I'm tired and I don't want to think about this movie anymore. It's a good movie to see with kids I guess? Got a lot of good action and I seem to be the only one who didn't like the movie, so oh well.