Quick Review: Did Free Guy score high with critics?

Ryan Reynolds' new movie, Free Guy, has finally hit Disney+ after a long-awaited time.

The movie focuses on NPC, Guy. He’s a non-playable character in the game Free City and works as a bank teller, though he feels content with his life he knows there’s something more out there. The plot moves forward with the character Molotovgirl AKA Millie. The rest of the movie is like a modern take on the Truman Show, with Guy wanting to break free from his programming and live in a game where he can be whatever he wants.

The movie is heavily focused on making the world feel real, constantly jumping between the gaming world and the real world, showing the differences through aspects like lighting and colour. The real world comes across a little darker and a much more mundane colour palette while Free City is bright and artificial and full of colour and blinking neon lights.

The humour is a mix of things: slapstick, sarcasm, innuendos the whole Ryan Renyolds Shabang! It works most of the time, though each to their own. The visuals are pretty good, some cgi looked a little off in some scenes but all around it was very good and was reminiscent of video game culture.

Speaking of, there were plenty of game and movie references in this movie, my personal favourite being the Portal reference. But of course, I think the biggest one was the MCU mentions, with Chris Evans appearing for a quick cameo. There was also the marketing for this movie, a video featuring Deadpool and Korg, played by Ryan and Taika Wati, surfaced not long before the movie was set to premiere and had taken the world by storm.

The cast was amazing, with actors like Taika and Joe Keery, notably Steve from Stranger Things, the movie’s bound to be good. Ryan brings his usual confidence and cockiness to the movie, his character being a protagonist everyone can get behind. There were also the Youtuber and Twitch cameos from actual gamers that a social media audience would get, this included Ninja, Jacksepticeye, Pokimane and DanTDM.

In conclusion, the movie didn’t look like a hit when it first showed its trailer back in 2020, most critics thought it would flop right out the gate. Yet the movie seemed to show everyone, proving that those critics were wrong, and the movie holds up really well, though I imagine it won’t hold up in a year or two when all the jokes and references are outdated.

Free Guy is a fun movie aimed at the people of the internet, it’s not cringy like Wreck it Ralph 2 but doesn’t hold the whole illusion as well as the Truman Show, which I recommend people should watch if they enjoyed this movie.

Free Guy gets 3 Guys out of 5.

Free Guy is available to stream on Disney+