READY PLAYER ONE – Review

Well, if ya’ can’t beat em’, join em’. Or exploit em’. And “piggy-back” on em’. An old adage, but that’s been the thinking of the movie studios whenever they’re threatened by other forms of entertainment. Too many folks are staying at home, listening to the radio, rather than filling the movie houses? Turn some of the big radio stars into movie stars (as with Jack Benny and Bob Hope) and make some films based on the popular radio series (as Columbia did with BLONDIE, which was based on the still-running newspaper comic strip). And what supplanted the radio as the preferred home-based entertainment?  Television, adding visuals to keep the “bijou” neighborhood theatres empty. This time the studios offered gimmicks and enhancements that the then tiny screens couldn’t match: 3D, stereophonic sound, and Cinemascope, which lead to Cinerama, not to mention the tricks and tools spearheaded by producers like William Castle (“Emergo”). And later Hollywood raided the tube for stars and subject matter (“Star Trek” started as a TV show, became a movie franchise before returning to its roots). In the early 1980’s the big movie menace were the advent of the video games, first at the arcades, then seeping into homes via popular gaming systems. Disney was the first to try to reach this new market with the ground-breaking 1982 smash TRON (which was given a sequel 28 years later). THE LAST STARFIGHTER made another fictional game part of its plot. And eventually the studios based movies on games, such as STREET FIGHTER, MORTAL COMBAT and countless others. But the movies weren’t alone in their romance of “gamers”. In 2011 Ernest Cline wrote a popular novel set in a virtual world immersed in recent pop culture icons. And who is tapped to helm the film adaptation of this hit book? None other than the famous film maker who was the force behind so much of the pop culture of the last five decades, Steven Spielberg himself. Yes, he guides the controls for READY PLAYER ONE.

The story’s hero Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) fills us in on the dystopian future world of 20145 as the film begins. After the “Corn Syrup Wars” and the band-width battles, the gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” has grown much wider. The orphaned Wade is in the latter group, living with his aunt in Columbus, Ohio’s “stacks” (literally trailers and mobile homes stacked on top of each other, reaching into the skies like rickety towers). But all classes have the same obsession, the virtual reality world of the game known as OASIS. Playing has grown more intense since the recent death of its creator, the eccentric genius James Halliday (Mark Rylance). Upon his passing, the company released a message from him explaining that the game has three hidden keys that will unlock three “Easter eggs”. The first person to solve the game will get a multi-billion prize, along with the company. In addition to the individuals competing, a rival gaming corporation as entered the fray. IOI headed by the ruthless Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) has an army of always hooked-up players, the “sixers” to find the prize and unlock Halliday’s tech secrets. Luckily, Wade (who adopts the persona of Parzival within OASIS) has a group of buddies he’s never met in the real world: master mechanic Aech (Lena Waithe) and the warriors Sho (Philip Zhao) and Daito (Win Morisaki). Oh, and Wade’s got a major crush on the mysterious video vixen Art3mis (Olivia Cooke). When his research at the Halliday Archives pays off with the first key, the group attracts the attention of Sorrento who sends out his henchman, the game’s I-Rok (T.J. Miller) and reality’s F’Nale (Hannah John-Kamen) to eliminate them permanently (online and on-ground). Can Wade AKA Parzival and company locate those keys and win the prize before Sorrento’s crew locates them?

Sheridan, after braking into big studio flicks as the new teenage Cyclops in the X-Men series, takes on the plucky hero role with confident energy. His Wade doesn’t mope over the hard life he’s been given, using his brain more than brawn to escape his circumstances. But Wade really comes alive when he assumes the Parzival avatar, a cocky blend of surfer dude and Bowie charismatic cool. He’s the perfect romantic sparing partner for Art3mis, a spike-haired sprite whose charms aid her in outscoring all her opponents. When we meet her in the real world, Cooke as Samantha still has the street smarts along with a sweet vulnerability and a reluctance to opening up to anyone. The entertaining Waithe is pure bravado as Helen and her alias Aech. As for the baddies, Mendelsohn is a seedy unfiltered corporate creep, crushing all in his way. The same is true of his avatar, a smirking beefy cross of Gordon Gecko and HEAVY METAL’s Captain Stern (miss you Berni Wrightson), nearly bursting out of his three-piece suit. John-Kamen is a crisp, fearsome “dragon lady” as Sorrento’s “cleaner”, while Miller is hysterical as the hulking hitman always complaining of a new ailment or minor malady. Simon Pegg has several great moments as sympathetic software guru Ogden Morrow. But the movie’s real scene-stealer is Rylance as his former partner, now “Obi-Wan”-like OASIS mastermind Halliday. He’s a parody riff on real life icons Jobs and Gates blended with the Wizard of OZ and Willy Wonka (no wonder the trailers used the song “Pure Imagination”). Halliday, even in flashbacks, seems otherworldly, gliding above the ground as he reaches for the cosmos, his eyes always at half-mast while  distracted and painfully awkward socially. This is another triumph for the talented and versatile Rylance.

After the intimate historical drama of last December’s THE POST, Spielberg lets his imagination run wild in his most spirited high-octane action romp since the his TINTIN CGI flick of 2011, but to somewhat mixed results. Fans may scurry off to a second viewing to drink in all the pop culture cameos (there’s the 66′ Batmobile) rather than any emotional connections to the human characters. Mind you, a second act game sequence set inside a meticulously recreated tribute to an 80’s fright flick classic is lots of giddy geek fun (as is the major role given to the cult classic cartoon hero, THE IRON GIANT), but the film quickly devolves from there into a mind (and backside) numbing “battle of thousands”, though really just millions of pixel on pixel exercises that are too reminiscent of some of the more mediocre computer game-based flicks (the interminable WARCRAFT springs to mind). Plus, it feels as though Spielberg has just rewatched the original MATRIX from 1999, so that the OASIS world is shot with a camera constantly spinning around each avatar (vertigo-time), which makes it difficult for the viewer to focus in on the dimly lit game world (triple the light flares of a J.J. Abrams flick). Back in the real world, we’re not given a real chance to truly bond with Wade, Sam, and the gang before they’re logging in once more. They’re the poor nice kids (The Goonies in VR) against the black-hatted. mustache-twirling Sorrento and his minions. But as I mentioned before, we’ve got the delightful Rylance to bring some much need humanity to the near-endless mayhem. Oh, for a spin-off prequel about the complex Halliday (this shy, introvert builds a digital museum with his every minute of life documented and cataloged). But for the current flick, I felt like a kid out of tokens at the big slick arcade, The gamers look to be having fun, but the twirling flashing screens never reach out and grab me by the brain or heart. READY PLAYER ONE razzles and dazzles the eyes , but does little else.

3 Out of 5