Free Guy (2021)

Free Guy (2021)

 

8/10

Starring

Ryan Reynolds

Jodie Comer

Lil Rel Howery

Utkarsh Ambudkar

Joe Keery

Taika Waititi

 

Directed by Shawn Levy

 

Free Guy is like taking one of the coolest ideas (A.I.) and wrapping it around one of the coolest inventions (video games), which seem to have absorbed human existence. For years now, Ryan Reynolds has carved a space for himself in Hollywood as that actor who is funny, cool, and can really kick ass. Free Guy is everything his persona is, and the role fits him like a glove. The movie’s plot unveils like you’re eating your favorite dessert, munching gently until you get to the cherry in the middle.

The movie isn’t perfect, though. In the end, the realization of the love interest and the romance, which was set in the background, could have had a better reveal.

The movie takes place in a video game world called Free Guy. The multitude of characters are NPCs (non-playable characters) whose only role is to be taken down by real-world players. The players roam free and level up by causing as much destruction as they can. The game belongs to a company run by Taika Waititi’s character, Antwan. The Antwan character is crafted to be one of those guys you just love to punch, which makes the acting so much more appreciated. The world we see before us reminds me of the video games Grand Theft Auto, Cyberpunk 2077, and Fortnite. The movie takes a lot from those games and merges some concepts from The Matrix and the book Ready Player One.

The film is about realization and taking charge of your life, which the character Guy (Reynolds) does. Guy is written to be love-starved and empty, looking for the one. As the regular NPC, he lives the same life every day, not knowing any different, until a lady walks past him: Molotov Girl. Molotov Girl is a character in the game controlled by Millie (Jodie Comer), who is combing through the game looking for proof that Antwan stole her code and used it in the making of the game.

Millie and her friend created a video game where NPCs have next-level A.I.s and can live constructive lives of their choosing. They sold the game to Antwan’s company for him to publish, but Antwan shelved it and never did. Instead, he stole the A.I. code from it and built his own game (Free Guy) and denied the duo royalties and recognition.

Upon seeing Millie’s character in the game, Guy (an NPC) went rogue off his regular settings and went after her. He died, got respawned (which he didn’t know was happening), and decided to do something different. At first, everything around him almost crumbled, and he gave up. Then he tried again, saw a difference, and went after Millie.

She tells him to leave her be and that he needs to go level up if he wants to even talk to her (she thinking she’s talking to a player, not an NPC who has taken a liking to her). He took her words seriously and decided to go do that, in his own way, by being the only good guy in the video game.

The makers were going crazy trying to stop him, but he was causing a frenzy in the outside world. Everyone was talking about him and wanted to be like him, but Guy had one focus: to level up to over 100 so he could meet his dream girl. He succeeded and soon found himself sucked into her quest.

There’s much fun set before you as you watch this movie, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t.

Kate (2021)

Kate (2021)

 

3/10

Starring

Mary Elizabeth Winstead

Miku Martineau

Woody Harrelson

 

Directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan

 

When you sit down to watch Kate, you get from the start that this is something you’ve seen before, and I guess the producers felt it was okay to do it again. I think the best way to rate this film is to let you know it’s a B-movie with subpar graphics. The car chase looked like something they lifted from the video game Need for Speed. While everything else in the movie felt like derivatives from other films involving female assassins and their controllers getting into sticky situations, there’s nothing fresh about it.

When numerous movies start to feel alike, there’s no longer a thrill. You can guess your way through the plot from the first minute. How the makers expect you, in good conscience, to recommend this movie to another person, beats me.

The movie had a flat take on its own story, and the characters (except for Kate) were just redundant and bland. All through, you’re made to feel like you’re waiting for something to happen, which never does.

So, what is Kate?

You start with a character (Kate the assassin) who grows a conscience when it comes to a kill. Because, as you can guess, the kill’s daughter was present. Well, Kate carries on with the job even though she tries to object to it, and we now have a devastated daughter. At this point, you’ll be able to guess that circumstances will add up and a series of unfortunate events will bring the two together.

Fast-forward to a one-night stand, and Kate gets poisoned with a radioactive element, which now gives her one day to live. She gathers up some adrenaline shots and goes hunting for the bad guy she believes was behind her poisoning.

It turns out, the suspected man, as you can guess, is related to the person she killed and is the uncle of the little girl. Kate kidnaps the girl with only one thing in mind: getting the bad guy to show up so she can kill him and die in peace.

This lack of innovation is caked with bad CGI, weird gunfights, plot holes, and some not-so-necessary incidents that only make you question if the makers think you’re dumb.

This movie is on Netflix, and I believe Netflix needs to step up on all the trashy, skip-worthy movies they’ve had their hands in nowadays.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead, on her own, took the movie more seriously than it deserved.

Cinderella (2021)

Cinderella (2021)

 

2/10

Starring

Camila Cabello

Idina Menzel

Minnie Driver

Nicholas Galitzine

Billy Porter

Pierce Brosnan

 

Directed by Kay Cannon

 

This Amazon Prime musical comedy starred Camila Cabello as Cinderella. We kick off with a very nice musical number of Rhythm Nation (Janet Jackson) and You Gotta Be (Des'ree), merged together ever so nicely. As you would expect, Cabello did some solid singing, for which I have no reason to complain. After that, everything that follows is bulls#@t.

(This review contains spoilers, which is odd to say because if you don't know the Cinderella story by now, you must have had a weird childhood.)

It takes a lot of energy to get through this movie without pulling your own hair out. The writers' decision to make a woke girl-power/women-liberation movie and base it on a Cinderella plot goes over my head. Who signed off on this trash?

The movie’s women’s message totally steam rolls everything else. This is supposed to be a modernized Cinderella story, but what we get instead is a watered-down girl-power script with no spice.

I don’t recall the Cinderella story ever having space for Cinderella trying to kick off her own business. Well, in this plot, after the regular intro of Cinderella, the wicked stepmother, stepsisters, and the prince, we discover that Cinderella is a dressmaker with a desire to start her own business. It just so happens that in the kingdom she lives in, women are not allowed to own businesses. At this point, I should have stopped watching. But something stupid in me soldiered on.

Then the regular Cinderella things happen, with some changes here and there to make the movie a lot different, but not different enough that you’ll forget this is a Cinderella story. The time for the ball comes, and who do we have? A fairy godmother who is male — correction, a man who wants to be addressed as a woman. We skip through that and get closer to the main magic, the lost shoe. At this point, I notice that the movie is filled with more cameos of British comedians that I’ve come to love after watching British panel shows like Taskmaster, 8 Out of 10 Cats, Would I Lie to You, QI, and Mock the Week.

Even all these cameos meant nothing to lift the mood of the trash I was being fed. The fairy godmother does her magic, and Cinderella gets a dress for the ball, with a magical carriage and everything almost identical to the Disney animated version. She gets to the ball, she and the prince fall in love, and when midnight strikes, she has to run off, leaving him behind with one shoe because, at midnight, all the magic ends. The prince, as you can guess, is heartbroken and needs to find his love.

Now, here’s where the writers messed up again.

The old tale had its plot holes, but this one decided to make the holes so big it could suck in the whole Earth. The prince had met Cinderella twice before their ball meeting. Even the king, in the end, recognized her as having seen her before. But the prince seems to be so dense that he would marry anyone whose foot fits the shoe, even though he already knew who it was he was looking for. At this point, I was like, can we stop the whole shoe-leg hunt and just hunt for the girl? But nope, the writers wanted to stick to this part of the story.

Now, the stupid thing about this is that in the story they’re modifying, the prince never met Cinderella. Knowing that, the shoe hunt (which you’d want to believe is a magical shoe that only fits Cinderella) kinda made sense, all things considered. Here, it made no sense at all.

Then the end has Cinderella and the prince marry and live happily ever after. The king can now rest knowing that the crown can be passed to the prince with a worthy bride at his side. Sike!!! That did not happen. Even that normal ending, they messed it up. I was so shocked that it was possible to mess up the “happily ever after.”

Cinderella and the prince decided not to marry right away; they wanted to spend their time getting to know each other first. What the hell?

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s life was also introduced into this mess of a movie. The couple, who have decided to date, also relinquish their title, and the crown is passed on to the prince’s sister.

Watch at your own risk.

Victor Frankenstein (2015)

Victor Frankenstein (2015)

6/10

 

Starring

Daniel Radcliffe

James McAvoy

Jessica Brown Findlay

Andrew Scott

 

Directed by Paul McGuigan

 

This movie is a sci-fi fantasy based on a contemporary adaptation of Mary Shelley's 1818 book Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.

It’s a bizarre idea trotting down a new path, deciding not to focus on what we all look forward to: Frankenstein’s monster. Instead, it gives us the drama before the creation, the lives affected along the way, and the changes that obsession can cause. I see many reviewers complain about the missed opportunity because, in the last moments of the film, the monster is created, and it turns out to be a zombie. We get to see the monster for like 5 minutes, and it wants to kill everyone before it, acting on animal instincts rather than anything intelligent. Victor’s experience of this sort of behavior happened earlier in the movie when he wanted to save a creature he created, regardless of the lives it would have killed. This time, his life was on the line, and what people saw as a missed opportunity, I saw as a certain realism. Who wouldn’t try to save his own life when the thing you created refuses to reason and wants to take your life?

The characters and their written actions in this movie, I feel, were a hit too many in the re-imagining of this story. The movie was written to have a gloom cloud hanging over it.

The movie sets this tone right from the start. Igor (Daniel Radcliffe) is seen as a hunchback who works in a circus. This hunchback has a thing for human anatomy and has read so much that he could be looked upon as a physician. He is, however, mistreated in the circus in many gruesome ways. He is made to act as a clown, sometimes thrown into a cage, and treated like property. Victor Frankenstein (James McAvoy) comes to his rescue from the circus after witnessing Igor perform some sort of medical genius when a lady fell from the trapeze. You’d think the cruel mistreatment would end, but Victor, though miles better in his treatment of Igor, still carries an air of gloom throughout. When things seem to lighten, for example, Igor meeting someone and growing towards being a better version of himself, something dark happens. This either sidelines his feelings for Victor’s own purposes or results in some incident that deepens his gloom.

The romantic subplot in Igor’s life wasn’t well crafted. I feel they should have just left romance out of this entirely. But then, I guess they wanted Igor to have an ending that had nothing to do with Victor.

Victor, on the other hand, after creating his first monster, which he tried to save but then had to kill, does this in front of a man who he wanted some form of sponsorship from. The man agrees to sponsor their work, so Victor and Igor can create a man.

Chasing this duo is an officer, a man who is so religious that he figures out Victor’s plans in the most unrealistic genius way. There were no clues or anything solid enough for anyone in his shoes to have put this together. But this man, thanks to some divine intervention, does.

He is after the two because he knows what they are up to and wants to stop them, as it is against God’s will.

The movie is a nice one to see, in my opinion, except for the shortcomings here and there.