Written by Andreas Babiolakis

During the awards season, I will be covering films that are a part of the discussion that have been out for a while.

One of the most beloved blockbusters of last year was Shawn Levy’s Free Guy: a Groundhog Day protégé with ties to Wreck-It Ralph. Basically the main character is an NPC (non-player character) in a video game that finally recognizes his ability to become the leading role of his own game, thanks to some coding embedded deeply into his world (an online multiplayer experience called Free City) and in his own programming. He is able to interact with real people via their digital avatars in Free City, and this links to a pair of video game designers whose breakthrough project (Free Life) was ripped off to make this widely successful MMORPG. On the surface Free Guy is a lot of fun, with so many little easter eggs tossed in every which way: I noticed early on a car just rapidly changing colours, because a player was clearly deciding the skin they wanted to go with. With references to other properties in here as well, I couldn’t help but think of Ready Player One (while not being quite as endless as the Steven Spielberg production, of course). It just feels nice to see meta filmmaking that can go the distance.

However — and I hate to sound like a stickler — too much of Free Guy didn’t really click for me as a premise via its myriad of executions to solidify its world building; it was a case of the film doth protesting too much and destroying its own illusion. For a film that was really trying to sell the idea of an NPC that can develop its own artificial intelligence, far too much didn’t line up with the other attempts to make this feel plausible. In the same film where enough backstory is given for the NPC Guy to be an actual possibility, the administrators and company personnel that deal with hackers and abusers are literally avatars in a game (controlled by real people) that go around chasing players (why not just, you know, turn off a player’s access point to the game, especially since they don’t know that Guy is an NPC yet?). Then there’s this conundrum: if players didn’t have a command to kiss others, how does a player manage to do so in the final act of the feature? Did the avatar develop the ability to do so? A player can’t just go against what their characters are programmed to do, but was it the avatar acting on its own? Why aren’t we learning more about this if so? If not, then is this just one of the many plot holes that is a terrible oversight given the clear instructions provided earlier? You see? I’m hurting my head over one of the countless events that go against the lore established here, and I could honestly be here all day.

The only way to not get bothered here is to turn your mind off and just witness the incredible special effects, loads of fun, and decent amounts of excitement throughout the numerous avenues of tension: will Guy manage to be fully realized, or is this it for him and his game? It’s unfortunate that one as to just ignore the world breaking “glitches” in order to fully appreciate the other finer details, but I think that’s reasonable with a film like Free Guy where the enjoyment comes in spades. For someone like myself that writes reviews, however, there are just too many implausibilities within a picture that is trying to subsume us into its world and prove that something like this feels legitimate. Groundhog Day succeeds with its mystery: we don’t know why it is happening, and just accept it. Free Guy must explain everything, and it only steps on its own toes so many times. It’s a ride to watch but a headache to try and figure out.

Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.