Welcome to the Ready Player One NON-SPOILER review. This movie was a hard one for me to critique. It suffers from what I'll call the bi-polar syndrome of movie making. It has extremely great parts and extremely poor parts, or extraordinary weird segments.
Before I really get into it, let's get one thing straight. I did NOT read the book, so my review is specifically based on what I saw in the theatre and not what I know about the story. I loved the themes and story of this movie. You will hear from a lot of people that this is a video game movie, and that is incorrect, kinda'. The plotline focuses around a video game, yes, but most of the pop-culture references are from 80's movies. Yes, there are video game references as well, but tons and tons of 80's movie and TV shows show up here. One thing I enjoyed about the movie as a whole is the references all had a purpose; they were not shoe-horned in as I was afraid they would be. From the trailers, you see things like King Kong for instance. He has a very specific purpose in the movie, not just a cameo appearance. The war that is featured in the trailer was easily my favourite part of the movie. This segment was done so, so well. Absolutely incredibly done. The action, the reference placements, the story during this piece, everything gets top marks. Simply put, Spielberg at his best.
Then we have the downward spiral. There is close to no character development at all in the movie. There are scenes that you are clearly supposed to feel for the characters, and I found myself just not doing so. Sort of like they were expendable characters simply filling roles to push the story along. Now, there is some development, but it's blocky and almost forced in parts. Also, it looks like some scenes were just cut right out of the movie. The characters on multiple occasions seem to 'jump' to their next emotions; almost like a hard editing cut on the film. The main character seems to go from a sniffling week nerd type of character to organizing and leading the war in a matter of what seemed like ten minutes, really, without reason too. Yes, things happen to him to make him choose to lead the army, but nothing THAT serious happens. Not to the point where you would start trying to overthrow governments. Ok, ok, there is one scene where something very serious happens to him. The reason I say not enough to make those choices is he never takes the time to actually feel what happened. He simply moves on as though nothing happened at all. I guess maybe it silently effected him, but if so, he only even mentions it one more time in the movie, and that was easily forced into that scene as well. Cooke's character goes from one scene where she is ashamed of her face, to the next scene pulling her hair back and showing it off. It was these small scenes that through off the character's journeys a bit, and make the movie sometimes seem like it's been cut up and re-positioned.
Tye Sheridan and Olivia Cooke's chemistry in the movie is forced at best, sometimes. This is where this is really hard to review this movie. Sometimes the way the characters interact with each other is simply brilliant, other times in the theatre I found myself asking, 'Whoa, what happened there? Did I miss something?' because the actors' emotions quite literally jump from one place to another in how they seem to know each other and feel about each-other. It's almost jarring to see sometimes. The relationships between the five of the main protagonists are barely fleshed out enough for them to even be there together sometimes. Having said that, if you can look past the emotions they are trying to portray, the team actually looks good and works well together.
I like the main villain of the movie, played by Ben Mendelsohn, but I'm not sure why he was the bad guy. Throughout the whole movie, you are told by many people that the villain and his company are simply evil, but you're never really shown or told why. You are just supposed to go along with it, which makes for a very one-dimensional foe. Now, later on in the movie, you see the company's type of jailing system, which is a little weird because they are not the police as shown later in the movie. The show doesn't explain why this company is allowed to effectively 'jail' people at all. The company 101 seems like they above the police, but not really. It is portrayed almost like they can do whatever they want, and although it's not legal perhaps, the police just look the other way for some reason. If this is the way it is actually supposed to be, a simple line of dialogue from Mendelsohn saying something about paying them off would have sufficed. I think that might be what was missing from the explanation of 101; they never said why or how they are in power, or that they really are in power of some kind. It, just, kinda' happens and you are supposed to just go along with it.
I loved the easter-egg parts of the movie, and I don't mean the references this time. The core part of the film is, everyone and their brother are trying to find these three hidden keys in the VR land of Oasis. If they get all three, they will inherit half a trillion dollars and rule the Oasis. I loved the solving of the riddles and that whole journey. The places that the riddles and clues take the characters are very natural feeling. Sensible and meaningful to another of the characters in the film. There are many underlining messages in this film, and they are presented very, very well in my opinion.
There is also a very specific scene that was put into the film that I feel does a great job of telling the children in the audience the dangers of people online. Most of the film takes place in the VR land Oasis, which is our equivalent to the internet just in VR. The scenes have a character describing in detail to another the dangers of telling someone online who you are in the real world. It also brings to light that when someone says they are something, they could be anyone. The avatar in question is a twentyish-year-old stunning female, and one of the characters tells someone else (paraphrasing), 'They could be a fifty-year-old, three-hundred-pound dude, balding with no ears or something'. Having children myself, I thought these scenes were well placed and are needed more in these kinds of movies. Kids need to know the perils of the internet.
Overall, I enjoyed the movie. It was easily worth the price of admission in the theatre. The film is beautifully constructed visually, and even though I had some pacing and character development problems with the film, I will still rate it well. On a scale of one to ten, ten being the best thing I've ever seen, this would come in around 7.5 stars. I definitely laughed out loud a few times during the movie, and simply adored the pop-culture references. Enough to overlook some of the glaring and sometimes startling plot and character problems. Having said my opinion, this movie won't be for everyone. You absolutely have to like: video games, 80's culture including movies and tv shows, mystery or adventure, otherwise, this movie will be a bust for you. If you're looking for a dramatic piece of cinema, you're in the wrong place. Overall, a great movie that I would recommend to see.
Ready Player One - 7.5 Stars out of 10
Tim Billson
Ratings Central
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