Ready Player One is a beautifully, expensively realized vision of hell. The year is 2045, and the world is an overpopulated wasteland; in Columbus, Ohio, the fastest-growing city on Earth, people live in shipping containers stacked on top of each other. The American dream is a rotting corpse, and instead of hoping for a better life, people while away their days in the OASIS: a virtual-reality realm filled with cartoon avatars of logged-on gamers, where you can do whatever you want as long as you have enough coins (a currency, it seems, that’s largely earned by blowing up other gamers). Steven Spielberg’s new film is set in two different dystopias, but it’s only intermittently interested in acknowledging that. The first is our real world, which has become far more polluted and overcrowded—both a typical and believable near-future prediction. The second is the OASIS, a dazzling land bound only by the limits of one’s imagination that has somehow ossified around late 20th-century pop-culture artifacts as if they’re religious icons. This is a film that treats an Atari 2600 like it’s the Ark of the Covenant, that turns The Shining’s Overlook Hotel into an inviolate temple, and where lines like “a fanboy can always tell a hater” are barked with sincere zeal. Related Story Steven Spielberg's Netflix Fears In Ready Player One, nostalgia has been transmuted from an easy crutch into a codified way of existence, where people talk about decades-old video games and movies like they’re the building blocks of contemporary life. And within the game, they are, since the OASIS was built by James Halliday (Mark Rylance), a bushy-haired, extra-dimensionally awkward coder who designed the VR world around his own interests and obsessions. The allure of this plot setup (based on a novel by Ernest Cline) for Spielberg seems obvious: Here’s a universe inspired by the kind of pop-culture legendaria he had a hand in creating, so why not have fun examining how his legacy has been perverted over the generations? Though the director occasionally explores this idea, Spielberg too often swerves into the easier territory of serving up genre references and lobbing them into centerfield for a cheering crowd. Godzilla! Akira! The Iron Giant! It’s all part of the phantasmagorical CGI gumbo that Ready Player One throws its heroes Parzival (Tye Sheridan), Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), and Aech (Lena Waithe) into. Those are the characters’ virtual identities within the game, but I might as well use them since 90 percent of the movie is spent in the OASIS, which is rendered in gloriously absurd anime-style graphics. 
 
 Like many a video game, at the heart of Ready Player One is a heroic quest, a series of mysteries programmed by Halliday to pop up on the occasion of his death (the film opens five years after he dies, though his virtual self lives on). The first to solve the cryptic puzzles and find the “Easter Egg” gets to inherit the company, which is worth about a half-trillion dollars: a totally logical succession plan for a program that seems to dominate most of public life on Earth. Competing against hardcore fans like Parzival and Art3mis is an evil corporation called IOI, which is run by a fun-hating capitalist stooge named Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn, doing his usual sneering-villain thing). His aim is to turn the OASIS into a malware-ridden netherworld of popup ads and tiered memberships. It’s clear, from the glimpses of the America that Spielberg offers the audience, that the country is beyond saving. So Ready Player One’s heroes instead concentrate on fixing their virtual home, battling IOI to keep it from inheriting the game. The horrible company’s business strategy is utterly Dickensian: IOI forces people into indentured servitude by buying up their cyber-debt and imprisoning them in VR booths until they can work it off. Viewers see these faceless avatars doing grunt work around the OASIS, keeping the cartoon trains running on time for their corporate masters. In one shot, during an action-packed online battle, Spielberg turns his camera onto a real-world sidewalk filled with people running around with their headsets and battling imaginary foes. ||||| The gamer kid in Steven Spielberg lets his VR freak flag fly in Ready Player One, a mindbending joyride that jacks you into a fantasia bursting with CGI wonders, dazzling cyperscapes mixed with live action, hidden Easter eggs and infinite pop-culture shoutouts to the 1980s. (Better brush up on everything from Alien to Zemeckis if you don’t want to be left behind.) The legendary director's aim in this go-for-broke adaptation of Ernest Cline’s 2011 sci-fi novel, a geek touchstone, is to get you in the game, and it's a blockbuster that aches to be interactive, Forget about headsets, however: Spielberg is in control. And why not? He's the maestro at this kind of stuff. 
 
 But first, some harsh reality: It's 2045. The world has gone to hell. Orphaned Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) is stuck in the shithole that time has made of Columbus, Ohio, where people live in trailers piled on top of each other. The populace chase dreams in OASIS, a virtual-reality platform created by mad genius James Halliday (the great Mark Rylance) and his business partner Ogden Morrow (a sly, surprising Simon Pegg). The dying legacy of Halliday's whacked-out Willy Wonka, seen via numerous flashbacks, is one last, kill-or-be-killed game for his followers to play. The winner who finds the three hidden keys, which will lead the lucky champ to the ultimate Easter egg, will inherit the late creator's fortune – and total control over OASIS. 
 
 And we're off! When Wade puts on his digital visor, he morphs into Parzival, the perfect cool-kid avatar. His best-friend-forever Aech (Lena Waithe, absolutely terrific – every movie should have her) is a tech whiz whose avatar is proud to show up the competition. Both Wade and Aech have their eye on Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), a pink-haired speed diva and a real competitor in the film's first challenge – a car chase to end all car chases. Obstacles for Wade, traveling in a DeLorean time machine (hello, Back to the Future!), include King Kong, a hungry T. rex and a host of other reference points too sweet to spoil. 
 
 Wade passes his first test, along with Aech, Art3mis and the Japanese duo of Daito (Win Morisaki) and Shoto (Philip Zhao) – gunters, a.k.a. Easter egg hunters, that he knows only in the OASIS. But there's a villain lurking out there: Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), a corporate white dude who's determined to beat the kids at their own game. He relies on a monster named i-R0k (riotously voiced by T.J. Miller as if he never left Silicon Valley), who is, of course, no match for one boy against the world, a Spielberg staple since the glory days of E.T. In a trivia challenge based on John Hughes movies, Wade will give Nolan the dusting of a lifetime, and working from a script by author Cline and Zak Penn, Spielberg concocts enough battles and showdowns to fill a dozen movies – though look out for a sequence on The Shining that is alone worth the price of admission. 
 
 Is it overkill? You bet. But Spielberg's visual inventiveness is unflagging. He stumbles only when trying to warm up the tech gadgetry with a personal touch, as when Wade and his friends, known as the High 5, finally connect in a reality that brings fantasy crashing down to earth. Sheridan and Cooke bring genuine romantic longing to their few scenes together. But the live-action segments of the movie are more buzz kill than bracing. 
 
 For those looking for Ready Player One to condemn the digi-verse as a destructive force against human connection, find another movie. The script is too shallow for that anyway, and don't look to the filmmaker – a child of divorce who found escape (and an eventual career) by getting happily lost in television, movies and early vid-games – for a lecture. The head-spinning spectacle won't quit even when the sensory overload gets too much; if he has a chance to show the Iron Giant battling Mechagodzilla, he'll take it. At 71, this iconic director barely pays lip service to constructing a cautionary tale against anything that might help an alienated kid build an oasis of his or her own imagining. As ever, Spileberg is ready to play. Are you? Game on. ||||| Do you know the name of the high school the characters attended in John Hughes’ movies? Did you play “Pitfall!” on the Atari 2600 when you were a kid? And are you aware of what lurks behind the door of Room 237? 
 
 You may be able to answer “yes” to all three of these questions (as I was), and yet still not be able to register much more than a chuckle of recognition in response to the vast majority of voluminous pop-culture references scattered throughout “Ready Player One.” The action is breathless and non-stop, both in the virtual reality and the reality reality, but wallowing in ‘80s nostalgia is only so much fun for so long—even if you’re a child of the era (as I am)—and it only really works when it serves to further the narrative. So much of what constitutes the humor in Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Ernest Cline’s best-selling novel is along the lines of: “Here’s a thing you know from your youth.” And: “Here’s another thing.” And: “Here’s an obscure thing that only an elite few of you will get, which will make you feel super-smart.” 
 
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 Chucky from the “Child’s Play” movies shares the screen with The Iron Giant and the DeLorean from “Back to the Future.” A thrilling auto race through the virtual streets of New York finds the characters daring to outrun the T. Rex from “Jurassic Park” as well as King Kong. There’s no way to catch it all in one sitting. This is a movie that has a literal Easter egg—and it is indeed a “movie,” not a film, as Spielberg himself pointed out earlier this month during its South by Southwest premiere. 
 
 Spielberg would seem to be the ideal director for such a thorough (and overlong) trip down memory lane. This is, after all, the decade he helped define, asserting himself as one of our greatest and most influential filmmakers. “Ready Player One” may have sprung from someone else’s brain originally, but it’s a Spielbergian hero’s journey at its core, complete with lens flares early and often. The young man at its center is an obsessed gamer named Wade Watts who goes by the moniker Parzival in the massive virtual reality everyone inhabits in the movie’s dystopian future. But he’s very much a figure in the same driven, single-minded vein as Henry Thomas in “E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial,” Harrison Ford in the “Indiana Jones” films, Tom Cruise in “Minority Report” or Tom Hanks in “Catch Me If You Can.” The actor who plays Wade Watts, Tye Sheridan (“Mud,” “X-Men: Apocalypse”), even resembles a “Close Encounters”-era Richard Dreyfuss. 
 
 “Ready Player One” is at once familiar in its fabric and forward-thinking in its technology, with a combination of gritty live action and glossy CGI. It’s an ambitious mix that can be thrilling while it lasts, and yet it fails to linger for long afterward, leaving you wondering what its point is beyond validating the insularity of ravenous fandom. 
 
 The movie’s copious needle drops drag us deeper into the decade, from Van Halen’s “Jump” and Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” to George Michael’s “Faith” and Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” At times, the selections can be painfully on the nose; the use of New Order’s “Blue Monday” to set the tone as we enter a large, laser-filled dance club is absolutely perfect, however. 
 
 Somewhere in the middle of all this retro mayhem (which Cline himself co-scripted with Zak Penn) is an actual story—which itself is a throwback to something that’s never specifically named. This is essentially “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” complete with a scrappy, crafty underdog attempting to solve a series of challenges posed by a whimsical, mystical genius in hopes of winning a grand prize at the end. 
 
 The year is 2045 and the place is Columbus, Ohio. Wade lives, as so many others do, in “The Stacks,” a densely populated cluster of cruddy trailers piled high atop each other and tied together by scaffolding. To escape their dreary lives, Wade and his neighbors strap on their headgear and enter the Oasis, a sprawling virtual reality where everyone spends the bulk of their time. Yes, they’re doing VR in their RVs. 
 
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 You can be whoever you want to be, go wherever you want to go, do whatever you want to do. You can be a fearsome warrior or a sexy anime vixen. You can gamble in a casino the size of a planet or climb Mount Everest with Batman. Or you can just hang out with your friends—people you’ve never actually met, but you feel like you intimately know—as Wade does when he’s in the Oasis as the chicly rebellious, “Final Fantasy”-styled Parzival. His best buddy is a hulking orc with a heart of gold named Aech (Lena Waithe), and he’s smitten with a motorcycle-riding, punk rock badass named Art3mis (Olivia Cooke). 
 
 “Ready Player One” would have been a far more compelling film with either of these characters at its center, but we’re stuck with Parzival as our bland yet brave conduit. Waithe has a swagger that’s hugely compelling; Cooke doesn’t get nearly as much of a character to work with here as she did in the gripping dark comedy “Thoroughbreds,” but at least Art3mis is Parzival’s equal in terms of her smarts and abilities, and she and isn’t simply relegated to being “the girl.” 
 
 They (and everyone else) are searching for the three hidden keys left behind by the late creator of the Oasis: the socially awkward, Steve Jobs-esque James Halliday (Mark Rylance, a much-needed source of quiet and humanity in this noisy, overwhelming world). These are literally the keys to the kingdom. Whoever finds them becomes the heir to his empire and the ruler of the Oasis. No one has ever gotten close—not even Parzival, despite his encyclopedic knowledge of the minutiae of Halliday’s life and inspiration. Meanwhile, the greedy corporate villain Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn, chilling as always) has built a massive army of mercenaries to scour the Oasis for the keys so that he can exploit this realm for commercial gain. Which is totally evil, according to this behemoth studio blockbuster. 
 
 So much of “Ready Player One” consists of following these characters around as they jump from one challenge to the next, solving one problem before moving on to the next problem, with clues from the movies, music and video games Halliday loved. But this instinct leads to the film’s strongest sequence of all, which finds the characters’ avatars landing right smack in the middle of “The Shining.” I wouldn’t dream of giving away which elements of Stanley Kubrick’s film they explore—or which rooms of The Overlook Hotel. But I will say it is the cleverest use of CGI within a live-action setting, and it upends our expectations of a pop-culture phenomenon rather than simply regurgitating something we know and love back to us. It comments on why “The Shining” matters while also giving us the opportunity to see it unexpectedly from a fresh perspective. 
 
 More of that kind of multi-layered approach could have elevated “Ready Player One” from a rollicking, name-dropping romp to a substantive tale with something to say about the influences that shape us during our youth and stick with us well into adulthood. Oh, and the answer to that John Hughes question? It’s Shermer High School, Shermer, Illinois, 60062. ||||| Gamer adventure chronicles 40 years of pop culture and stands among the classics it mentions 
 
 Tye Sheridan stars as Wade Owen Watts/Parzival in "Ready Player One". (Photo: Warner Bros.) 
 
 A gloriously geeky ode to the last 40 years of pop culture wrapped up in a thrilling old-school adventure tale, “Ready Player One” is tremendous fun, a just reward for spending way too much of your life camped out in front of your television. 
 
 Steven Speilberg directs this exuberant celebration of the movies, video games and hobbies several generations have grown up on, with a Gen-X sweet spot that hits squarely on ’70s kids raised on first-gen Atari games. Know the Easter Egg hidden in “Adventure?” Congratulations, this movie is exactly for you. But for those who just want to romp through an index of pop culture references from A (A-ha) to Z (Robert Zemeckis), “Ready Player One” is for you, as well. 
 
 “Ready Player One” — based on the 2011 novel of the same name — rattles off big picture references to “Back to the Future,” “The Iron Giant,” “King Kong,” “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension,” “Batman,” “Alien,” “Child’s Play” and the works of John Hughes, along with one extended homage to a horror classic that is simply too good to give away. There are musical nods to Tears for Fears, Duran Duran, Blondie, Rush, Van Halen and Michael Jackson, for starters. 
 
 Look closer and you’ll spot winks to He-Man, “Minecraft,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” “Star Trek,” Simon (the electronic game), “Knight Rider,” “Goldeneye” (the N64 game), “Friday the 13th,” “There’s Something About Mary,” “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” “Beetlejuice,” “Cocktail,” Garbage Pail Kids, “Mortal Kombat,” “Battletoads,” Madballs and many, many, many more. Since Spielberg is in on the game, he tosses in references to his own “Jurassic Park,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Minority Report,” since they’re part of the tapestry of the movie’s universe. No doubt, scholars will compile lists of “Ready Player One’s” glossary of references for years to come. (Notably absent from the mix: “Star Wars” and Nintendo characters, although there’s always “Ready Player Two.”) 
 
 There is a way to be cynical or too cool for school when openly chronicling this many influences, but when has Speilberg ever been cynical or too cool for school? He creates a convivial, everybody’s-invited atmosphere of inclusion, not exclusion. He wants everyone to have a good time. 
 
 That makes the movie a throwback, as well. Although it takes place in a dystopian 2045, after the “corn syrup droughts” and the “bandwidth riots” have altered the landscape of our society, its vibe is pure ’80s, and its across-the-board, crowd-pleasing nature recalls all-timers like “Back to the Future” and the “Indiana Jones” series. 
 
 Tye Sheridan of “Mud” and “X-Men: Apocalypse” (he played Cyclops) is Wade Watts, a teenager living in “The Stacks” — basically an ungainly pile of trailer homes — in Columbus, Ohio. Columbus, surely much to the chagrin of U of M fans, is the fastest growing city in America, since it was home to James Halliday (Mark Rylance, an Oscar winner for Spielberg’s “Bridge of Spies”), the founder of an expansive virtual reality universe known as the Oasis. The Oasis is where pretty much everybody spends all of their free time, living a virtual existence where they can do anything and be anyone they want. Imagine society’s current addiction to Facebook and multiply it by the possibilities of a VR landscape, and you have the Oasis. 
 
 Before his death, Halliday hid a series of keys (or “Easter Eggs”) inside the Oasis, much like Spielberg has riddled “Ready Player One” with his own cache of Easter Eggs. If found, they will unlock his massive fortune, estimated at half a trillion dollars. These keys are so hard to come by, buried inside clues from Halliday’s own life, that after years of searching, the worldwide pursuit of them has yielded no returns. But Watts, in his gamer guise as Parzival, has a few ideas of his own. 
 
 There’s of course a corporate bad guy, played by Ben Mendelsohn (“Bloodline”) in yet another smarmy, villainous turn, and a love interest, played by “Thoroughbreds’” stunner Olivia Cooke. Cooke’s Samantha has a spunky in-game alter ego (known as “Art3mis”), who’s as brash and tough as Samantha wants to be in real life. 
 
 Much of “Ready Player One” unfolds inside the Oasis, and it understands the movement and mechanics of video games the way many gaming movies do not, “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” excluded. (Looking at you, “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.”) So while a good chunk of the movie is handed over to digital avatars — Sheridan might have less screen time as Wade than he does as Parzival — Spielberg never loses the heart or emotion of the story, nor does he get lost in a dull digital hellscape the way movies like “Final Fantasy” or “Warcraft” did. 
 
 Instead, “Ready Player One” is a blast of pure childlike amusement. Beyond its encyclopedic citations of pop culture past, it has a kinetic energy and big picture feel all its own. It feels like a new classic, one worthy of mention on its own accord. The next time a filmmaker goes deep in paying tribute to the greats, expect to see “Ready Player One” on that list. 
 
 ‘Ready Player One’ 
 
 GRADE: A 
 
 Rated PG-13: for sequences of sci-fi action violence, bloody images, some suggestive material, partial nudity and language 
 
 Running time: 140 minutes 
 
 Ready Player One (PG-13) 
 
 Steven Spielberg’s joyous, buoyant ode to the last 40 years of pop culture has a dazzling kinetic energy all its own. (140 minutes) GRADE: A 
 
 agraham@detroitnews.com 
 
 (313) 222-2284 
 
 @grahamorama 
 
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– Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One, adapted from Ernest Cline's 2011 novel of the same name, is set in 2045, but it's clearly homesick for the 1980s. Packed with nostalgic references, it follows gamer Wade Watts on a quest to take control of a virtual-reality world in which people now spend most of their time. Here's what critics are saying: David Sims calls it "a decent meal with tantalizing hints of something more complex." Given that Ready Player One's virtual-reality world is built around "pop-culture artifacts," Spielberg could've done a lot more than simply lob nostalgia at the audience, Sims writes at the Atlantic. He also says Tye Sheridan is "an inescapably dull hero." Then again, "there are far worse worlds one could get lost in, and far worse filmmakers to get stuck on a quest with." Christy Lemire liked Ready Player One, but found it didn't leave a lasting impression. The movie is "forward-thinking in its technology, with a combination of gritty live action and glossy CGI." One particular scene boasts "the cleverest use of CGI within a live-action setting," she writes at RogerEbert.com. But "wallowing in '80s nostalgia is only so much fun for so long." And the film leaves "you wondering what its point is beyond validating the insularity of ravenous fandom." Adam Graham is more effusive. Ready Player One is "a gloriously geeky ode to the last 40 years of pop culture wrapped up in a thrilling old-school adventure tale" and "a blast of pure childlike amusement," he writes at Detroit News. "Beyond its encyclopedic citations of pop culture past, it has a kinetic energy and big picture feel all its own" and "feels like a new classic," Graham adds. Consider it "a just reward for spending way too much of your life camped out in front of your television." Peter Travers had fun, too. The film is "a mindbending joyride that jacks you into a fantasia bursting with CGI wonders." There are a host of 1980s references "too sweet to spoil" and "enough battles and showdowns to fill a dozen movies," he writes at Rolling Stone. "Is it overkill? You bet. But Spielberg's visual inventiveness is unflagging." Plus, Lena Waithe, playing Watts' best bud, is "absolutely terrific—every movie should have her."