Steven Spielberg's latest is also the latest in a now never-ending stream of movies to Break the Internet, Ready Player One is an enjoyable, slight adventure that improves upon the novel by virtue of being able to show some of the adventures inside virtual reality.
Our boilerplate young hero, aged-up to 18 from high-school age and made slim because God forbid some goddamned fat kid should be the hero of a $175 million movie, wanders the virtual reality Oasis in a dystopic, corporate-controlled future.
He's on a quest to find three Easter Eggs left in the Oasis by its late creator (Mark Rylance, game as ever but woefully too old for the role). He teams up with four other freedom-fighting young whippersnappers online and then in the real world to find the Eggs and gain control of the Oasis before nightmarish corporation IOI wins the hunt and puts ads everywhere. I guess. Net neutrality forever!
A sequence set 'inside' Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is the showstopper, after which things seem to go on forever to rapidly decreasing effect. That Spielberg and company added a gratuitous, lengthy, real-world car chase intercut with the virtual climax of the movie isn't so much gilding the lily as it is covering it in lead.
Ben Mendlesohn is about as forgettable a corporate villain as one can imagine, which seems to be the point. That his online avatar appears to be the Berni Wrightson-designed Captain Sternn from the Heavy Metal movie just seems baffling. Due to rights issues, the entire film takes place in an alternate future in which Disney, Marvel, and Star Wars never existed. Lightly recommended.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.