Image from Free Guy Disney press kit

Free Guy Review

Is the highly anticipated Ryan Reynolds blockbuster worth a watch?

October 4, 2021

Free Guy is a comedic, action-packed video-game-based movie that has garnered a lot of comments and reviews. Being a brand new movie, it has received a lot of positive and negative remarks about casting choices, story structure, and overall originality.

The website Rotten Tomatoes is a popular way for people to express their views-, and opinions on movies. It also has an overall percentage rate that shows how many professional critics liked it. Free Guy received 80% on the scale, which is honestly a high percentage. It also has an audience score- that ranges at a 94% for Free Guy, which shows the calculated ratings that were submitted by the users of the website.

Image from Free Guy Disney press kit

To put it briefly, the movie centers around the main character Guy, who is a charming, lighthearted, comic relief character. He is, it is revealed, an NPC in the popular video game Free City. He works at the bank, and his best friend Buddy- is also there by his side as they both repeat the same thing over and over every single day. That is until Guy notices a girl, a real player in the game, and tries to talk to her, breaking the routine.

Everything after that brings in the chaos and wild adventures that Guy goes through as he realizes that his identity is nothing but a two-dimensional character in a video game. He discovers that the girl's name is Mille in real life and Molotov Girl in the game. She is one of the developers of the game, along with her ex-boyfriend, Keys. In the real world, Free City was stolen by the main antagonist, Antoine. The developers don’t have proof that the game is theirs, but they know that their proof most likely lies in Free City. This is the key conflict that Keys, Millie, and now Free Guy help to overcome. Moving forward, there are more obstacles they have to endure to get what they're after, as more and more characters join in to help prove that the game is stolen so they can all break free.

Image from Free Guy Disney press kit

Free Guy’s main cast includes Ryan Reynolds, starring as the main character Guy, Jodie Corner as Millie/Molotov Girl, Joe Keery as Keys, Lil Rel Howery as Buddy, Utkarsh Ambudkar as Mouser, and Taika Waititi as Antoine.

My input on Free Guy is fairly positive. I went to watch it in the theaters with my friends, and I noticed they weren’t that fond of it, but I sort of liked it. I would say that the things that I enjoyed the most were definitely the cast- and humor. I thought the cast played their characters very well- and made the movie a whole lot better. While some of the jokes were a bit on the childlike side, most of them were super funny. I personally think that Guy and Buddy made the best jokes throughout the movie. Also if you like YouTubers, some of the main ones that were part of the cast there were Jacksepticeye, Ninja, Pokimane, and DanTDM. I thought that including these popular YouTubers was a really nice touch. Overall, the dialogue and script was what really brought the movie together.

Image from Free Guy Disney press kit

Moving on to the more negative side of things, I believe that the references and basic storyline is what I disliked the most. The majority of the references were very much targeted toward the younger side of the audience, Since there was a plethora of Fortnite, Mario, and Minecraft references. Another thing I noticed was that the storyline wasn’t very original. It reminds me of other adventurous, game-like movies, and not in a good way. This also caused the ending to be quite predictable. Altogether, though, I would recommend this movie to young teens and adults. It's worth it to give Free Guy a fair shake.

Now that you know what you need to know about Free Guy, go see it! While it may linger too long on child-oriented jokes, it is genuinely funny and worth the two hours of screen time.

Julia DeLaquil (8)

This is Julia’s first year on staff and second year at Edgewood. They enjoy ink drawings and learning more about diverse groups. As a staff writer, they hope to contribute to the team and create interesting stories about the things they love.