A film to watch on a lazy day

Rating: 6/10 (22 April 2019)

You might wonder what Speilberg was thinking of taking on a movie like this one. Such a talented director and movie maker, but perhaps this is not really his genre, as can be seen by watching this film. A big mix-up of pop culture references and action sequences matched with a few uncoordinated romantic flirts.
The first and major problem with this film, is that it fails as a stand-alone movie, due to the fact that it relies on pop culture references to entertain the audience. There are countless of them, and many are just a few details left in the background. The idea of pop culture references is a good one. It's a good way to interact with the audience and make them nostalgic when they notice a Darth Vader-mask wearing robot in the background. But here they take up too much space and are to obvious. The fact that they even used a whole sequence from Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" and made the characters fool around in it, does not only feel like a insult to Kubrick's work, but it also makes this film lack a character of its own.
There could have been some forgiveness for all of this had there been an interesting story, but there isn't. Although the idea of having a deceased game maker host a competition (where the competitos have to find 3 keys in order to gain access to the entire game) in his own game is a relatively interesting concept, it falls short due to awkward relationships between the characters and poor acting. Perhaps the only good performance from this film came from Mark Rylance. And the supposed romantic relationship between the to main characters feel forced and amateurish. The story also feels really predictable, as you almost instantly know that the main character is going to make it and get the girl in the end, which adds a sense of boredom to the film, and takes a way the eagerness to continue watching
However, not all is bad. Despite some colossal missteps with the pop culture references, there is a joy in seeing the old DeLorean back on the screen, as well as some other small references. Moreover, the action isn't bad either. It's a joyful and colourful spectacle to watch that is also suprisingly entertaining. And it is what saves this movie from being a total bombshell of a disaster.
Conclusively, this is an entertaining movie actionwise, spiced with some nice pop culture references, but some of them were too much, removing the sense of actually watching a new movie. And a poor story and character interactions doesn't help. But it still can be a good watch on a lazy day.