Movie Review: Ready Player One

Rating: 7/10 (6 April 2019)

This is definitely a Spielberg film which is probably it's biggest strength. In the 1st act Spielberg shows fantastic understanding of makes an action sequence exiting as well as how how to successfully use the references that are scattered around the film. The 3rd act is "pure Spielberg magic" as the poster reads and it does have the unique feeling of watching Spielberg at his best. My problem however is with the 2nd act, this is a long movie and it feels it length due to some very long scenes of characters talking within the real world. These real world scenes are handled well enough but compared to the incredibly action packed and existing scenes within the OASIS they drag and are honestly quite boring at points. Much like the tone, the performances are also uneven. Stand outs would be Olivia Cooke as one of the players within the OASIS her performance being genuinely charismatic and likeable and Ben Mendelsohn as a the corporate bad guy. The weakest performance in my opinion has to be from T.J. Miller whose performance seems based solely on the fact that you are already supposed to like him and for me his whole thing is getting pretty old. Overall this is an entertaining enough popcorn flick. It's not one to think too hard over and there are some genuinely entertaining scenes. The references are pretty fun if you like that kind of thing (some personal favourites involved nods to Child's Play, The Iron Giant and The Shining). It's definitely uneven but it's still fun.