Films with Izzy: Free Guy

Post date: October 13, 2021

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Summary: In the world of Free City (an open-world MMO), there are two kinds of people, sunglasses-wearing “heroes” (players) and normal people without sunglasses (NPCs). The normal people abide by their everyday routines, while the “heroes” spend all their time tormenting and terrifying them. A bank-teller named Guy doesn’t question this routine until he runs into a girl wearing sunglasses whistling his favorite tune. Slowly, Guy begins to deviate from his normal patterns as he falls in love, and he learns that his world is not as it seems. The audience gets to watch an NPC grow self-aware and disrupt the world around him as he unravels the true nature of the city he knows and loves.

Would You Enjoy It?: Did you like The Truman Show but wished there was less of a psychological thriller bent to it? Are you a gamer who's tired of movies that inaccurately portray internet culture? Do you really like watching Taika Watiti play a completely unsympathetic character, who’s so funny you like him anyway? Well, have I got the perfect film for you. While The Truman Show often gets into unnerving territory and ends on an ambiguous and bittersweet note, Free Guy doesn’t get nearly as daunting and stays cheerful throughout, even with higher stakes and similar themes. Free Guy uses the ubiquitous culture of the internet to advance the plot and show how the outside world feels about what’s going on in Free City without feeling like the writers googled “2020 memes” and copy-pasted the first page of results into the script. And, God, Taika Watiti excels in this film. Without spoiling the final act, I will say he excels at the role of an uncaring CEO who only wants money, while still making the role absolutely hilarious at the same time.

Final Thoughts: Free Guy promised the audience a high-concept comedy about life in a video game, and by God does it deliver. While there are some moments that seem a little too on the nose, (as the film isn’t fully immune to “How do you do, fellow kids?”, nor is it immune to hollow attempts at being “with the times”,) Free Guy rises above these minor drawbacks to create an immersive experience that will be living in your head rent-free for a while. Free Guy asks us, the audience, if our lives were programmed routines, if our thoughts were mere lines of code, if the world we knew was merely a game for some higher beings, would any of it matter? Would anyone still fight to save it? And the answer it gives us is “Yes.”