MOVIE REVIEW: Free Guy is an unconfined joy

Ryan Reynolds is a cinematic cross between Matthew McConaughey and Ben Stiller, in that he’s partly the hunk and partly the likable nerd. Yet he manages to remain wholly himself, in more ways than one.

In “Free Guy”, he’s starts off as Ben Stiller virtualized in a video game as an NPC (Non-Player Character) called “Guy”.

The game is called “Free City.”

Guy, no relation to Gaetano Kaggwa, is the personification of the everyday man as he wears the same blue shirt every day, orders the same coffee every day, and goes to work at the same bank, you got it, every day.

Guy, meantime, loves his life and is oblivious of the fact that he is a one-note personality.

You could say his life is like a Louie CK quote, “everything’s amazing and nobody is happy”.

Since, to be happy, one would have to be real. Yet Guy and his smiling best friend Buddy (Lil Rel Howery) are not real.

Well, they are not until Guy sees another actual player called Molotov Girl (Jodie Comer).

That’s when his gaze, punctuated by floating hearts, leads him to believe he can be so much more than he believes, or is given to believe.

As he follows Molotov Girl, he gets his hands on a pair of sunglasses that reveal what the actual players see and suddenly his life becomes like Jimmy Nash song: I can see clearly now!

In order to have a shot with Molotov Girl, he must level up in the game and so that’s what Guy does.

Enter Matthew McConaughey, as Ryan Reynolds of course.

Guy levels up, without using violence, and thereby becomes a celebrity who leaves everyone on the internet wandering who this gamer is.

Yet he’s not a gamer but a remarkable breakthrough in artificial intelligence, a creation by a tech wizard called Keys (Joe Keery).

Keys is on a mission.

This involves him linking up with Millie, who is Molotov Girl in the game, to turn this virtual world of “Free City” into a mirror of the real world.

That’s a world where individuals have individuality. Well, that’s not the real world, but that doesn’t stop this subplot pretending it to be so.

Antwan (Taika Waititi) is the villain who stole Millie’s and Key’s code and he must be stopped in order to make the virtual world a better place.

This better place must be more like the real world: a place where people escape to the virtual world by playing video games precisely because it is not a better place!

Sarcasm aside, "Free Guy" has a great cast which features Channing Tatum and his Magic Mike dance moves.

Reynolds is exciting as an action hero, while Comer, as Molotov Girl, has the insouciant charm of Anne Hathaway in “The Dark Knight Rises”.

They’re plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, but these are largely shunted to subtexts as the main message is love’s power to unlock the spirit.

This is where the movie evolves into a homily about self-actualization.

So “Free Guy” is like the fable of Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, which is an ode to self-determination through transcendence of the body towards the limitless nature of the spirit.

In this sense, the Free Guy succeeds in hitting the right notes to remind us that we are all complete in our incompleteness.