FREE GUY (PG13)
115 minutes, opens today
Rating: 2 Stars
Big, boisterous action comedies not based on an existing brand are rare these days, when superhero movies and their sequels have swallowed every studio budget.
This return to the days of Night At The Museum (2002) and Tropic Thunder (2008) is welcome, if only because it shows that artistic courage has not fled Hollywood completely.
The connection to Night At The Museum is more than a coincidence. Free Guy’s director, Shawn Levy, helmed Night and its two sequels (released in 2009 and 2014) and a great deal of that DNA is carried over. For example, in the plot, a nine-to-five worker bee plunged into a world of wackiness but guided by a desire to do right, becomes a hero.
Guy (Ryan Reynolds) is a non-player character, or NPC, in the world of Free City, a video game that combines driving with killing other players with guns and…
