Mary at the Movies
Academy Award winner Steven Spielberg introduces us to a quirky, glitzy, fast-action film that will appeal to those who remember their childhoods fondly.
“Ready Player One” is riddled with references to ‘80s and ‘90s cultural phenomena. If you like the comic book movies, you will like this film.
In the year 2045, the real world is a junkyard. To escape this dismal reality, people escape to OASIS, an immersive virtual universe. In the OASIS, you can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone — the only limits are your own imagination. One young man, Wade Watts (played by Tye Sheridan) lives in Columbus, Ohio, with his aunt and her abusive boyfriend in the Stacks, a group of trailers piled on top of one another. Wade uses this method to get away from his miserable reality.
OASIS was created by the brilliant eccentric computer genius James Halliday (Academy Award winner Sir Mark Rylance), who has since died. He has left his immense fortune and total control of OASIS to the winner of a three-part contest he designed to find three keys that will open the way to an Easter egg and ownership of this alternate reality.
I got the sense the Halliday character is based on Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook.
Wade joins the race to gain control of OASIS with the help of four friends — Sho (Philip Zhao), Aech (Lena Waithe), Art3mis (Olivia Clark), and Daito (Win Morisaki), who collectively call themselves the High Five. When Wade conquers the first challenge of the reality-bending treasure hunt, he and his friends are destined to conflict with IOI: Innovation Online Industries and its CEO, Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn).
According to the internet movie data base, there was some flap over Tye Sheridan being chosen as the lead actor. The casting company advertised that they wanted an unknown actor as the lead, raising the hopes of many wannabes. The day after auditions concluded, it was announced that experienced actor Sheridan was chosen for the lead, dashing the hopes of many aspiring actors.
One surprise for me was the selection of the musical director, Alan Silvestri. On a PBS program, Spielberg said all of his movies are always scored by Academy Award winner John Williams. Williams was slated to score “Ready Player One” but left to work on another Spielberg film, “The Post.”
The audience loved this film. All the men I talked with were crazy about it. I thought it was too long (2 hours, 20 minutes). I would like to have seen about 30 minutes on the cutting room floor.
I was underwhelmed by the script. It had some very funny lines and the references to earlier movies were entertaining, but I thought it dragged in the middle. I also had trouble hearing some of the dialogue. I met one woman who said she was going to come to this again to hear all she missed.
“Ready Player One” will be a technical blockbuster, but it is not the “instant classic” that the trailers promised. It is opening this weekend at AMC Showplace Edwardsville, Jerseyville Stadium Theatre and Granite City Cine.