150 minutes watching people play computer games. Seriously.

Rating: 1/10 (29 November 2019)

What's the point in leaving a review when there are already a couple of thousand out there? Well, this has a very high rating, I guess most of those reviews are positive, and I'd like to register a little warning for anyone looking for one.
In a grim future dominated by a single online game, the game's creator has hidden a huge real-world prize, with clues to find it. That idea is good, but nothing else is, and even this brings a problem, placing all the action inside the game - there are hardly any real-world scenes. Therefore the viewer spends 2.5 precious hours watching other people play computer games in which the worst that can happen is 'game over'. Serious gamers would surely sooner be playing than watching this.
There are references to gaming history, but far more to film and other aspects of pop culture, most of them very dated, and possibly tedious for younger viewers. OK, we all know Millennium Falcon, but how many people know what 'Valley Forge from Silent Running' is?
So what's so bad? Everything. There's no plot beyond the idea itself. It's way way too long for something with no plot. The characters are boring, partly because the acting is poor across the board, especially bad-guy Ben Mendelsohn who sleepwalks through. The original score is horrible, loud and intrusive. The dialogue is flat, dull and rarely funny. The direction is patchy with long sequences of sheer tedium. The FX, which dominate the movie, are same old same old, with nothing to surprise. And finally: in this future world where, supposedly, everyone plays this game, how come the adventure features a bunch of guys (with one token, fashionably feisty woman serving as love-interest) versus, you guessed it, a bunch of guys (with one token black-leather clad woman in a tiny part, presumably for the benefit of male viewers who like women in black leather)? A third female does emerge late on as a kind of (hugely predictable) joke/surprise in an even tinier part, but basically this is sexist crap for no reason.
Spielberg has made good films but it's been a long while. I haven't seen all his work, and wouldn't want to, but this surely must be the worst. Maybe he should go back to WW2 so he wouldn't have to bother with female characters at all.