'Ready Player One' Review

Steven Spielburg is undoubtedly one of the greatest directors to ever live. However, the quality of his movies is steadily declining. In fact, I would argue he hasn't made a universally adored film in over a decade. Unfortunately, Ready Player One is more of the same. There are fleeting moments that feel reminiscent of the classics from his earlier career. Yet, they are only brief glimpses that get lost amongst the unbridled chaos that plagues this film.

In the year 2045, people choose to escape the hellish conditions of the real world in the OASIS, an fully immersive artificial reality in which you can 'go anywhere, be anyone and do anything'. The creator James Halliday (Rylance) has left his immense fortune and ownership of the OASIS to the winner of three challenges designed to find a worthy heir. Unlikely hero Wade Watts (Sheridan) teams  up with his gang of friends to win the contest and prevent the villainous IOI, led by Nolan Sorrento (Mendelsohn), from privatising their playground.

I should mention that I've never read Ernest Cline's novel of the same name that this movie is based on. I tried. The one chapter I managed to get through was just the protagonist reeling off a long and arduous list of all the pop culture references he knows. Regrettably, this has bled over into the movie. There are numerous moments where the already bare-thin plot grinds to a halt so that Wade can prove to us all that he knows more about Battlestar Galactica than you do. To his credit, Spielberg goes all in with the references. It's essentially a moving version of 'Where's Wally?'. There must be millions of references throughout to all forms of media: movies, books, games, music - if you can picture it it's probably in this film in some capacity. Admittedly, it's quite fun to search through seemingly endless waves of avatars to find your favourite characters. At least, at first. However, the movie very quickly crosses the line into 'over the top'. I'm confident that no matter how many times you watched this film you would never be able to catch them all, which in this instance is detrimental to the movie. In the end there are simply too many references, meaning that it's impossible to ever focus on any one individual, which draws you right out of the narrative and massively lowers any of the stakes.

When the film does narrow it's focus on specific elements, it works so much better. The best set piece in the film, for example, is a drawn out tribute to Kubrick's The Shinning. Exploring a impressively accurate recreation of The Overlook Hotel with a few twists and turns thrown in along the way is very engaging (may even cross over into full horror at one point) and I only wish there were more scenes like it. The opening challenge is also really entertaining. Watching the DeLorean, the A-Team' van and the Akira bike race, whilst trying to avoid King Kong and a T-Rex is undeniably cool. But by the end, so much has been crammed into the climatic final battle that it becomes a huge disappointment. So much is going on on screen at once that any sense of realism quickly vanishes and you're left with a bunch of indistinguishable cartoons crashing into each other.

The performances are on the most part pretty solid. Ben Mendelsohn is expectedly strong, but it's shame to see him being typecast as a one-note villain - you could copy and paste his character from Rogue One into this a probably not notice the difference. Tye Sheridan and Olivia Cooke are both fine, but for whatever reason I never found myself relating or even caring about what happened to them, or any of the heroes for that matter. Mark Rylance is great and he shares quirky and genuine chemistry with Simon Pegg. The shift in their relationship is one of the most intriguing developments in the movie, but sadly it's cast aside for less interesting protagonists.

To me, Ready Player One is certainly not Spielberg's 'return to form' as some have labeled it. There are some redeeming moments, glimpses of a better movie within this one. Yet, on the whole it's a huge disappointment. What was intended to be a celebration of pop culture gradually devolves into an incoherent mess. It's less of a movie than it is a cultural recycling bin that's way too full.

2/5 Stars