CGI dazzles but the movie's characters lack depth

Rating: 6/10 (30 March 2018)

"Ready Player One" (2018 release; 140 min.) brings the story of Wade. As the movie opens, we are reminded it is "Columbus, Ohio, 2045, The Stacks", as we get to know Wade, a 17 year old living with his aunt. Wade, like many, spends a lot of time in a virtual reality world called the Oasis. In the Oasis Wade is known as Parzival. Before long, we learn that Halliday, the deceased co-creator of the Oasis, has left an Easter Egg hidden in the Oasis (and along with it, ownership of the Oasis and a half trillion dollars), which can be retrieved upon collecting three keys. The Oasis avatars are keen on finding the treasure, and that includes shady characters from IOI, a competitor of the Oasis. Who will find the Easter Egg? What becomes of Wade/Parzival? At this point we're 10 min. into the movie, but to tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.
Couple of comments: let me admit right upfront that if it weren't for the fact that this movie is directed by Steven Spielberg, I doubt that I would've gone to see it. Spielberg is perhaps the leading director of the last 40+ years, and I will always respect what he does/give him a chance. This is the big screen adaptation of the novel by Ernest Cline, which I have not read (and hence an in no position to comment how widely the movie diverges from the book--if at all). The movie is at its essence a nostalgic trip down into the 70s and 80s, when simple(r) computer games ruled (Atari, etc.). Long stretches of the movie play out entirely within the Oasis, and hence are purely CGI. And I'll admit it: these are at times dazzling, and always entertaining, sequences Check out the initial car race in Manhattan, with King Kong at the gatekeeper of the finish line. And with that, we are also on a treasure hunt of pop culture references, the likes of which I cannot recall having seen before. Sure, other movies have dabbled into that as well, but surely no movie has the sheer amount of them that "Ready Player One". I caught quite a few, but I'm sure there are tons of others that I simply didn't have the time to see. (Apparently the production team spent several years negotiating to get the licensing rights for all of these pop culture references.) My favorite sequence comes when Parzival and his friends find themselves in the setting of Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" while looking for a clue to the next key. Sheer fun! However, once we are back in the real world, the movie suffers from poor character development. The movie's characters lack depth in every which way, and hence I have no emotional attachment or investment in any of them. In that sense, the movie is really just eye-candy, nothing more, nothing less, and I believe that a tighter edit of the movie (cutting its running time from the current excessively long 2 hrs. 20 min,) would've benefited the movie too. The movie features a ton of great music, both as to song placements (with lost of classic rock from the 70s and 80s) and the original score (courtesy of composer Alan Silvestri).
"Ready Player One" opened wide on Thursday (after previews on Wednesday evening). The Thursday early evening screening where I saw this at here in Cincinnati was attended nicely (but by no means sold out). As the end credits started rolling, the audience burst out in a spontaneous applause. Don't get me wrong: I liked "Ready Player One" for what it was, a nostalgic trip down into a simpler video gaming era, crammed with so many pop culture references that it will take several viewing to catch them all. But in the end, watching the movie is like watching a video game, literally. I encourage you to check out "Ready Player One", be it in the theater, on VOD, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray, and draw your own conclusion.