Ready Player One

Starring: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, T.J. Miller, Simon Pegg, Mark Rylance, Philip Zhao, Letitia Wright, Mckenna Grace
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Action, Adventure, Science Fiction
2018

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A young man (Tye Sheridan) sets out to find an Easter Egg hidden in a virtual world known as the Oasis, which will give him complete control over the entire system.

Review:

Tim: It's the downside of being perhaps the greatest director of all time when really, really good movies don't seem good enough. Steven Spielberg is one of the all time greats and he directs a thoroughly engaging science fiction adventure film with Ready Player One. But I'm two minds about the movie. Let's start with the negative to get it out of the way.

You could argue that Spielberg hasn't directed that many great movies in the latter stage of his career. His last four movies (this one included) have fallen short of greatness, which means 2012 was the last great movie he directed (Lincoln, and that was a minor great film). Before Lincoln was another three non-great movies. Part of me laments that Spielberg has seem content with turning out good movies when we know he's capable of more. In that aspect, Ready Player One seems a little disappointing. There were certainly ways Spielberg could have made this movie better. At 2 hours, 20 minutes, the film is obviously too long. The movie needed to be tighter, more focused. The characters weren't nearly developed enough. They were fine, but none of them were especially memorable. The plot felt quite convoluted. Some of this is intentional because the myriad cultural pop references thrown in, but it does create a bit of an overwhelming quality to the movie. It feels like Spielberg threw everything in here and it caused him to lose some focus. There's not a deep emotional impact to the film. I could go on, but there's plenty of reasons why this isn't a great movie.

However, I don't want to dwell on those, because for an "ordinary" director, this film would have been a great success. Ready Player One is an incredibly effective, entertaining movie. I had loads of fun watching the film and experienced genuine joy at various aspects of the movie. It tells an exciting, action adventure film that creates a memorable world in the Oasis. It establishes some bona fide geek culture cred by including so many cool pop culture references- King Kong, the DeLorean from Back to the Future, The Iron Giant, the (hilarious) Chucky gag, and dozens of more. It's so entertaining to watch this love letter to so many iconic pop culture icons. That's one of the most fun aspects of the entire film- that you get to see so many of these crammed into one movie. The visual effects are quite impressive, especially the scope of some of the battle sequences. Yes, the movie relies a bit too heavily on the CGI effects, but it's a minor concern. Truly, this is an interesting and unique story and viewing experience. This is a movie well worth seeing.

The cast was surprisingly less effective than I imagined it would be. I've been a big fan of Tye Sheridan- he's certainly an actor I believe has a long and successful career in front of him. I thought he was decent in this role, but I was slightly underwhelmed. I've seen his talent in previous movies and it didn't all translate here. He wasn't as charismatic or memorable as he needed to be. I enjoyed him, but we needed a stronger performance out of him. You could say that last line for Olivia Cooke, too- I enjoyed her performance, but it wasn't nearly as strong as it needed to be. I'm not sure if the green screens and the focus on the visual effects impacted the ability of the cast, but neither Sheridan nor Cooke gave their best performances here. Continuing that theme, as good as Ben Mendelsohn is at playing villains and people you truly dislike, his character felt too over-the-top here. He's a good actor, but someone needed to restrain him a bit more and bring some more layered complexity to his character. Mark Rylance was fine, but didn't quite nail the socially awkward character he was supposed to play. T.J. Miller brought some good humor with his comedic timing, but I lamented that we never saw him in real life. Simon Pegg was fun to see, but ultimately doesn't have much to do. Spielberg usually gets the very best out of his cast, but was unable to get that here.

Now, truly, I had a lot of fun watching Ready Player One. Spielberg is so talented and he is able to turn this film into a success. I would unhesitatingly recommend this to people. And yet, this film doesn't feel like Spielberg at his best or ever close to his best. Part of me laments that, but a larger part of me is thankful that even without his "A" game, he can deliver a film of this quality.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 7.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, The Iron Giant