The film equivalent of watching someone else playing a video game...

Rating: 3/10 (23 January 2020)

Steven Spielberg's latest cinematic exercise is the equivalent of watching somebody else playing a computer game: in other words, not very interesting at all. I thought he would've learnt a few lessons with his bland Tintin adaptation, but it seems not because READY PLAYER ONE feels like one of his worst-ever movies. It's a bland and soulless virtual reality adventure in which a mundane hero plays game to defeat the usual cliched big business corporate interest bad guys. Not at all predictable, then.
Spielberg fills his movie with pop culture references, which is mildly interesting I guess, but fails to make any of it entertaining for a second. The CGI animation I found to be quite shallow and insubstantial, with the same big-span battle sequences playing out over and over again that we've seen countless times in other Hollywood movies. I was longing for something more real-world and realistic and I look forward to the day that Hollywood gives up on this kind of mindless hokum. To paraphrase Jeff Goldblum in JURASSIC PARK: just because they can do these FX movies, doesn't mean they should.