Ready Player One *** (2018, Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Mark Rylance) – Movie Review

Steven Spielberg takes a fairly weak screen story and bashes all hell into it to make it a spectacular looking CGI-led flashy virtual reality movie, set in 2045, when the virtual world seems better than the crap real world. It is all a bit like now actually, an idea confirmed by the London and Birmingham location filming (though it is supposed to be futuristic Columbus, Ohio).

The result is an entertainingly passable, though only moderately exciting time-passer, and not one of the great movies we hope for from Spielberg. The main problems are all with the screenplay by Zak Penn and Ernest Cline, based on the novel by Cline. It’s all a bit thin and obvious, and kind of juvenile, and refuses to go the whole nine yards.

What acting is possible is pretty good. Mark Rylance enjoys himself as brilliant and eccentric James Halliday (aka Anorak), the creator of the virtual reality world OASIS, who dies and releases a video challenging users to find his Easter Egg and get his fortune. Tye Sheridan proves exactly the right choice as the American blue-collar hero, Wade Watts, who enters the game and is in it to win it as his idealised-self avatar Parzival.

In virtual reality, he encounters the lovely Art3mis, aka Samantha (Olivia Cooke) and falls for her feistiness. He doesn’t know who she is or what she actually looks like. Can they also love in the real world? Can they? No really, can they?

Can Wade wade in and get the keys to the three keys he needs to get the key to the kingdom of the OASIS? Oh, that will be no trouble at all. You see, we’ve got this big magic box of CGI images to splash all over the screen. Really, Mr Spielberg, why didn’t you just make an animated movie? It would have been so much more, er animated, perhaps.

Ben Mendelsohn plays the ruthless villain in Ready Player One.

Ben Mendelsohn has a lot to do, maybe a bit too much, as the ruthless villain Sorrento, Halliday’s old colleague who wants to beat wade to the Easter egg. (Oh, now I know why Ready Player One is released over the Easter weekend!) Mendelsohn is a particularly good actor and is fine, ironically trying to keep it real, but probably a different actor, and a much camper, moustache-twiddling performance would be a lot more fun.

Rylance is stuck with a couple of very dodgy wigs, but they are not nearly as dodgy as those on the head of Simon Pegg, playing his co-worker Ogden Morrow. Luckily Pegg doesn’t have much to do because he is not much good. Or maybe that’s because he doesn’t have much to do.

Tye Sheridan and Olivia Cooke are virtually in Ready Player One (2018).

To try to fill the empty spaces of the story and the movie, Mr Spielberg not only splashes the screen with costly-looking CGI but sends in every darned reference to Eighties pop songs (and Staying Alive) and movies he or anyone else can possibly think of, including a long and elaborate homage to Kubrick’s The Shining and even chucking in Chucky, and a battle between the Iron Giant and Mechagodzilla.

Yes, that’s fine, but what’s the point? We’ve probably seen all these movies and heard all these songs too. It is just a process of recognition. We are meant to feel good because we know what Spielberg is talking about. Of course, it is surprising that he knows all this popular culture stuff, as you’d have imagined he was too busy creating films to watch them as well. OK, clever, and industrious Mr Spielberg.

Ready Player One stars Olivia Cooke and Tye Sheridan.

In the end Ready Player One is just another popcorn movie, quite fun, but very disposable. Mr Spielberg needs to get back to making movies for grown-ups. The film has the nerve to tell us that spending time with real reality is best, after bashing us over the head for two hours and 20 minutes with partaking of the joys of virtual reality. It also has the nerve to set up what looks like a sequel. Ready Player Too? No I’m not ready at all.

Sadly there is no score by John Williams, who was working on Spielberg’s The Post (2017) and Alan Silvestri took over. This is only the third Spielberg film without Williams. Silvestri’s score is good and strong, though.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

Tye Sheridan dives into the OASIS in Ready Player One.