Fellman's Movie Reviews

Red = Spoilers 

What’s it about? Free City is a fictional MMORPG with a very large fan-base and consistent players. The players of Free City differ from the NPCs (non-playable characters) in that they wear sunglasses that can be stylized to go along with the player’s outfit. The NPCs are unaware that they live in a video game, and so they go about their daily routine as they’re programmed to do, oblivious to the chaos going on around them. One of the NPCs is Guy, a bank teller who follows the same routine every day in complete bliss until one day the player MolotovGirl walks past him singing his favorite Mariah Carey song and it catches his attention. This begins to change his programming and he starts doing randomly odd things. Eventually leading him to shoot one of the players that is trying to rob the bank. Guy then leaves the bank with the player’s sunglasses and puts them on outside, allowing him to see what the other players see. At this point a couple of IT guys, Keys and Mouser, from Soonami, the company that produces Free City, go into the game and try to get Guy to log out and then try to boot him out but they can’t figure out who he is or who his account belongs to. Guy meets MolotovGirl, or Millie Rusk in the real world, at a player’s stash house where they are trying to find evidence leading to Millie’s stolen source for a lawsuit that she’s working on in a case against Soonami. She doesn’t realize Guy is an actual NPC and tells him to level up before trying to help her again. Whereas all other players create violence and destruction in the game, Guy levels up being a good guy and helping people and becomes famous for it. Keys eventually realizes that Guy is an actual NPC and that Free City 2 is going to be released in 48 hours, completely replacing Free City 1, terminating all of the games NPCs. Keys tells Millie and she tells Guy the truth about his existence. Antwan, the owner of Soonami and creator of Free City, sees Guy as a threat to his plans to release Free City 2 and orders a server reboot, which resets Guy’s memories. Guy then regains his memories after Millie kisses him. Guy recalls the location of an island after seeing it in his window shades and they realize it’s the source code for Millie’s original game Life Itself that Free City is based off of. Antwan fires Keys after he helps create a bridge helping Guy get to the island. Antwan then has a Hulked-up caricature of Guy sent into the game while at the same time he has every player booted off. He then begins to destroy the servers with an axe so that Guy can’t get to them and get the source code to prove that he stole it from Millie. Before Antwan can destroy the last server, Millie offers Antwan a deal to abandon her lawsuit in return for her source code back. Later, Keys and Millie have created a new indie game called Free Life that is simply a game that you watch where AI lives their lives, and it becomes extremely successful. And you learn that all of the attributes that made Guy and Millie compatible were because Keys had designed the game as a love letter to her.  

What’s good? Everything’s good. From the special effects to the soundtrack. The script is one of the most original I’ve seen in years. It has some of the best lines. Like Mouser’s in-game pink rabbit skin line. And “catchphrase as a catchphrase would be a pretty cool catchphrase…” 

What’s bad? I think it drags on a little bit at the end. It’s almost got this “get on with it already” kind of feel to it. Not that it’s boring or anything, it’s just not as entrancing as the rest of the movie is.  

The acting? Everybody is doing a great job, except for Taika Waititi. I don’t think he deserves to be an A-list actor at all.  

The effects? The effects are excellent in this movie. All the video game stylizations that are going on all the time as well as all the explosions and random quests that are happening make it a really trippy experience.  

The cars behind them are changing colors. There’s always something going on in the background. The cars behind them are changing colors because players are changing the colors of their cars.  

The deposit slip says “today”. The deposit slip that Guy works at doesn’t have a date on it, it just says “today” when he stamps it. They didn’t program a date into there.  

Is the bank a quest? The bank gets robbed so often, you have to wonder, is robbing the bank a quest? Like, is there a reason so many people rob the bank? Or is it just an easy way to get money in the game? 

A rebooted version of “They Live”. Free Guy really is just a rebooted version of They Live when you think about it. Except instead of aliens, it’s a video game.  

When she says “turn around” he does a complete 360. Millie tells Guy to “turn around” and he does a complete 360 and continues looking at her completely oblivious to what she meant because he’s a computer, and he didn’t understand what she meant.  

Guy levels up being the good guy but dies constantly. Yeah, Guy levels up being the good guy, but he dies over and over again, just going to show that it’s a lot harder to be the good guy than it is to be the bad guy. 

Who likes bubblegum ice cream? That’s such a disgusting flavor. Who would like bubblegum ice cream? Who even makes bubblegum ice cream? That’s gross. 

If they created computers that evolved that quickly, they would quickly surpass humans. Computers that evolved that quickly are multiplying their computing power exponentially at an alarming rate. If they’re becoming self-aware AND have the processing abilities of a computer, that’s the end of humanity right there… 

Channing Tatum really busts a move in this movie. Channing Tatum is really breaking it down in his dance scenes in this movie. I didn’t know he could dance like that. Big up to Channing Tatum, I suppose… 

Antwan tries a kip up and fails. Antwan tries a kip up and misses it and then gets up looking like an idiot and just kind of walks away from everybody while they snicker at him.  

If Guy’s code evolved to come to life, wouldn’t it do it again? If Guy’s code changed to come to life, wouldn’t it eventually change to come to life again sooner or later anyway? And then, if it reverted, because it is code, wouldn’t it happen over and over again? Because it’s always starting from the same place? 

Can the fat guy not put his arms down? Does the fat guy always have to stand with his arms up in the air? That really sucks for that fat guy… 

If Antwan boots everyone, how are they going to make any money from the game? If Antwan boots everyone from the game, how is Soonami going to make any money from it? What’s the point of the game even existing anymore if nobody is playing it? 

Did Antwan just plan to destroy the entire server room? Was his plan to just destroy the whole thing? That seems awfully “Old Testament” doesn’t it? Things aren’t going your way? Destroy the world… People not agreeing with you? Destroy the world… That lady says it was her idea? I have a better idea! Destroy the world! 

So, yeah. Go and see Free Guy. It’s the funniest MMORPG based movie I’ve seen so far. And as far as I know, I’ve seen them all. And as always, keep on watching, with a smile on your face…