Video review: "Ready Player One"

Many of us are living significant chunks of our lives inside virtual spaces these days, probably without even noticing. Example: My son and I have been co-playing a fantasy war game on our phones, bonding over downing gruesome beasties and recruiting an especially powerful new hero. I’d defy anyone to label it anything other than a positive shared experience.

But there is a downside to constructed realities in general and video games specifically, one that “Ready Player One” explores in the form of a dystopian future where most of the important reactions happen inside the Oasis, a virtual reality where people can pretend to be just about anything.

Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) is a high school senior living in poverty -- both in the real world, where he resides in stacks of trailer homes, and in the Oasis where he plays a low-level nobody named Parzival. But there is a grand contest going on, put on by the deceased co-creator of this world, and the winner gets to control the entire Oasis.

Needless to say, some corporate bad guys are gaming the game to try to get an advantage. Ben Mendelsohn plays the CEO of a conglomerate that is flooding the system with anonymous players called Sixers all working in conjunction to win the booty. But the whole world is upended when humble Parzival manages to unlock the first door.

Soon an all-out war is brewing. Wade finds allies in Aech (Lena Waithe), his longtime friend and running buddy, as well as Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), a legendary player that he has been harboring a crush on. All the legions will gather to do battle.

Like a lot of director Steven Spielberg’s more popcorn-y movies, “Ready Player One” is a visually dazzling picture that’s a lot of fun, but also hides some hefty themes just under the surface.

In the Oasis people can do stuff that’s straight out of a 14-year-old’s daydream -- Parzival races the DeLorean from “Back to the Future” in a smash-and-dash race, for instance. But they also spend much of their lives wearing VR headsets and suits, eschewing the dank corporeal world for one filled with pleasures and eye candy. I don’t think it’s accidental that whenever the filmmakers pull us out of the Oasis to see what’s going on in the RL (real life), the movie’s energy takes a dip.

Based on the novel by Ernest Cline, who co-wrote the script with Zak Penn, “Ready Player One” is an entertaining movie that also shows us the dark side of the entertainment machine.

Video extras are decent, though not as lavish as you’d expect from a big-budget Spielberg picture. They consist of six making-of documentary shorts:

• “Game Changer: Cracking the Code”
• “Effects for the Brave New World”
• “Level Up: Sound for the Future”
• “High Score: Endgame”
• “Ernie & Tye’s Excellent Adventure”
• “The ‘80s: You’re the Inspiration”

Movie:



Extras:

Review: "Deadpool 2"

The first “Deadpool” was the naughty, foul-mouthed cousin of the Marvel Comic Universe -- sharing much DNA but separated by sensibilities and different studios. One of the running jokes of the lively sequel is that they can’t afford any of the “expensive” other heroes to share the screen as they did in the latest “Avengers” flick… though they manage to sneak in some cameos.

Once again, unkillable killer Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), aka Deadpool, visits the mansion of the X-Men school, only to find the same two downmarket mutants around: the steely Colossus (voice of Stefan Kapičić) and the firecracker teen Negasonic. Though there’s a quick peek at some of the other X-folk hiding out in an antechamber.

It’s another slapdash, freewheeling train of one-liners and ultra-violence, with Deadpool as our merry ringmaster. If you’ll remember from the last movie, Wilson was a special forces soldier turned mercenary who was experimented upon nastily, rendering him a scarred monster who can nonetheless heal virtually any wound.

The thing about Deadpool isn’t that he’s indestructible -- he’s most very destructible. He gets destructed, or deconstructed, on several occasions, only to knit himself back together. In an early sequence he decides to blow himself up over some sad occasions, only to have the pieces bundled up to reform again.

Without giving anything away, Deadpool finds himself in need of a new purpose in life, and latches onto a 14-year-old mutant from New Zealand, Russell (Julian Dennison), who dubs himself Fire Fist. (He likes the kid too much to tell him how awful the moniker is.) He’s a troubled youngster heading down a dark path.

Around this same time, a strange cyborg dude from the future, Cable (Josh Brolin, playing his second super-baddie this month), pops up to take out Russell for some crimes his adult self committed. He’s got a metal arm, robotic eagle eye and a surly attitude. It becomes a running battle, with Cable wielding a variety of futuristic weapons and Deadpool his ability to take a punch and give a quip.

When things don’t work out with joining the X-Men, he even decides to start his own super-team, naming it X-Force for reasons of gender equality, and because he couldn’t think of anything more original. It’s a gangly crew of low-level mutants and one extraterrestrial, although Domino (Zazie Beetz), a churlish lass who claims her power is “good luck,” seems like a keeper.

The film is directed by David Leitch, a veteran stunt coordinator who made the leap behind the camera with “Atomic Blonde,” which for my money was even better than the similar “John Wick” flicks. The screenplay is a return of the same trio, Simon Kinberg, Lauren Shuler Donner and Reynolds himself.

The sequel has a few dead spots around the middle, though it’s still an insanely smart, fast-paced merry-go-round of fun and f-words. Deadpool again repeatedly breaks the fourth wall, commenting upon the movie as it unspools.

For instance, one background player from the last movie gets a brief, nervous speech, and Deadpool immediately declares, “No more speaking lines for you!”

Or, when Cable delivers another gravelly bit of doom dialogue: “You seem very dark. Are you sure you’re not from the DC Universe?” Before Colossus is about to go toe-to-toe with a very large, cult favorite villain, Deadpool announces “the big CGI fight.”

Make sure to stick around for the end credits, where Deadpool makes some unexpected appearances in related superhero venues, including one hilarious reprisal, which I’ll not spoil. “Just cleaning up the timelines,” he offers.

It’s not quite as funny or filthy as its predecessor. But “Deadpool 2” still has a gleeful sense of shamelessness to it that, at least in this little corner of the superhero genre, fits like leather spandex.

Review: "Ready Player One"

I’ve been playing video games for 40 years, so it’s no surprise I would truly dig a book that’s about them, and the movie they made of the book -- from director Steven Spielberg, no less, a filmmaker who’s always been plugged into the pop culture of the day.

The Oasis in “Ready Player One” is essentially every video game rolled into one. Based on the novel by Ernest Cline, who co-wrote the screenplay with Zak Penn, the story is set in a dystopian future in the year 2045, where life on Earth is hell and all meaningful interactions take place in the virtual world of the Oasis. People wear VR goggles, gloves and other gear to act out their dreams.

Think of it as Star Trek, Dungeons & Dragons and World of Warcraft all rolled into one -- along with every creature or gadget from every science fiction/fantasy film ever made.

There, you can do almost anything you can dream of: live as an 8-foot-tall ogre cyborg, drive the DeLorean from the “Back to the Future” movies… even fall in love.

But the Oasis has a downside. It’s become the center of world economy, which means it’s a ripe target for those who would exploit it for their own gain, like Innovative Online Industries, or IOI. They’re swarming the grid with their drone-like army of avatars, known as Sixers, to solve the riddles left by creator James Halliday (Mark Rylance) after this death, which will lead the finder of three keys to the mother of all Easter Eggs.

The prize? Nothing less than control of the Oasis itself.

Though it differs from the book in myriad ways, small and huge, “Ready Player One” is still a dazzlingly entertaining movie that also nudges its audience to consider the weight of their own existence in RL (gamer lingo for “real life”). As fantastical as this world is, we’re left with the conclusion that nobody should spend all their time wrapped up in a comfortable cocoon spun out of technology.

The story brings together a band of young freedom fighters waging war against the tyranny of IOI and its conniving leader, Nathan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn). To get a flavor of his M.O., in one scene Sorrento cheerfully informs his corporate board that once they take over the Oasis, they believe they can fill players’ visual fields with advertising up to 80% “before inducing seizures.”

Chief among the rebels is Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), a humble teenager who goes by the handle Parzival in the Oasis, taking the form of an androgynous, albino-haired punk. His best friend is Aech (pronounced “H”), the aforementioned ogre, who’s the fun-loving, self-assured yin to Parzival’s dweeby yang.

The most famous “Sixer Fixer” in the Oasis is Art3mis, an elf-like warrior played by Olivia Cooke. Parzival and Aech soon join forces with her, with Wade predictably falling in love with the avatar of someone who, as Aech points out, could very well by a 300-pound dude from Detroit.

Like James Cameron’s “Avatar,” most of the prime action in the movie plays out in a CGI dreamscape, punctuated by occasional returns to the “real” world, which is dank and grim. There’s so much to see and take in, and so many little Easter eggs and pop culture references, you’d have to rewind and freeze-frame the movie to catch them all.

(My personal favorite: the chant used for an important spell is the same used in 1981’s “Excalibur.”)

There’s no way the filmmakers could have obtained the intellectual rights to all the bits of pop culture stuffed into Cline's book, most of it hearkening back to the 1980s and '90s, so they swap them out with other ones, or invent new stuff entirely. I was a little bummed we didn’t get to see Ultraman make a pivotal appearance, though his replacement isn’t exactly mincemeat.

Cline and Penn also significantly alter and truncate the actual quest line in the book, making the three keys themselves the object rather than the gates they open. (Probably a wise choice, as it could easily have pushed an already long movie to the three-hour mark.)

For example, things start off with a slam-bang road race, rather than a very RPG (role-playing game) descent into a classic D&D module that must seem like dim history to Millennials.

“Ready Player One” is part computer-generated thrill ride, part Luddite warning, and all Spielbergian nostalgia adventure. Insert your quarter -- er, about 40-50 of them, at today’s ticket prices -- and get ready for a gleeful romp in the ultimate video game playground.

Review: "Big Hero 6"

I miss comic books, though I don’t know if they miss me. It’s been 25 years since I bought one, and since then an entire generation of artists has grown up and created books I’ve never heard of -- including “Big Hero 6,” which has now been adapted into a Disney animated film.

Apparently, the Disney folks weren’t acquainted with this lesser-known Marvel title until about three years ago. But it supposedly, in Hollywood parlance, “spoke to them.” I’m just not sure if they understood what it was saying.

The problem with “Big Hero 6” is that it’s structured as the gentle tale of a boy and his robot, and then it veers suddenly into a superhero team genesis story with lots of boingy action and sneering bad guys. Not only to the two halves never really mesh, but the other four members of the “6” wind up as afterthoughts.

In this tech-heavy story, they’re literally add-ons.

Based on the comic by Duncan Rouleau and Steven T. Seagle, “Big Hero 6” is set in an alternate version of our world, slightly in the future. The locale is San Fransokyo, a multicultural mix of East and West sensibilities. Fourteen-year-old Hiro Hamada (voice of Ryan Potter) is a science whiz who’s already graduated from high school, but spends his days hustling in robot battle matches. His older brother, Tadashi (Daniel Henney), thinks Hiro should follow his own lead and enroll at the Institute of Technology, where they’re taking robots and gadgets to the next level.

Tadashi’s own big invention is Baymax (Scott Adsit, who must have the most calming voice I’ve ever heard), a funny-looking medical robot made of inflatable vinyl. He puffs himself up to full size when he senses a person is injured, resembling a crossbreeding of the Michelin Man and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from “Ghostbusters.”

(I pause here to point out that, though I’ve not read the comic book, I did enough research to learn the Baymax in it resembles the portly, vanilla-personality version seen here not at all. He’s a huge, mean, green warrior.)

Anyway, bad things happen and Hiro decides to transform Baymax into a blinged-out badass -- a serious challenge, considering he’s basically a white balloon who leaks air if even slightly abraded. His programming is about helping the sick and injured, not laying down the hurt. But Hiro tinkers with his exterior, transforming Baymax into a big red flying goliath, and with his innards, rendering him more assertive.

The rest of the team are assembled late in the game, and are other students at the institute. They include Wasabi (Damon Wayans Jr.), who wields energy blades sprouting from his hands; Honey Lemon (Genesis Rodriguez), who concocts all sorts of strange goos from within her handbag; Go Go Tomago (Jamie Chung), who skates around on and wields gravitational discs; and Fred (T.J. Miller), a dim-bulb dude-ish type who dreams of becoming a fire-breathing dragon… and does, sort of.

It’s kind of nice to have a team of super-heroes who did not get their abilities via gamma rays or mutation, but through sheer dint of their brains and hard work. They’re basically nerds in super-suits. Interestingly, the outfit Hiro creates for himself does not grant him any powers; he basically just rides around on Baymax’s back like ballast. It’s also weird that, after an early moment spraying Hiro’s burn with ointment, Baymax never employs his medical skills again.

The villain is a mysterious bad guy in a kabuki mask who has stolen Hiro’s micro-robot technology to create a seemingly invincible army of tiny minions who can form themselves into any shape he imagines. (I was never quite clear why Hiro, who creates all the incredibly advanced power-ups for his team in a garage, isn’t able to just whip up some more microbots.)

Other notable characters include Alistair Krei (Alan Tudyk), a reckless industrialist; Professor Robert Callaghan, benevolent head of the institute (an excellent James Cromwell); and Maya Rudolph as the Hamada brothers’ loving aunt.

I really liked the early part of “Big Hero 6,” when it’s just the story of a lost and lonely kid who uses his smarts to invent a friend. Then it tries to go all “Avengers” on us.

Review: "Yogi Bear"

I'm all for dopey flicks designed to keep small children entertained, or at least distracted, for a while. I've got a rugrat myself now, so I'm sure I'll soon be making the acquaintance of Sponge Bob, Barney and Elmo.

But does programming for kids -- I won't deign to call it filmmaking -- have to be as aggressively bad as "Yogi Bear"?

Straight from the lame school of "Garfield" and "Alvin and the Chipmunks," "Yogi" stars live humans interacting with computer-generated versions of cartoon characters. The effect is not convincing, nor is it expected to be. Every minute Yogi and his vertically challenged sidekick Boo Boo are onscreen, they're calling attention to the fact that they're not really there.

Dan Aykroyd does a reasonable facsimile of Yogi's voice, which was originally done by Daws Butler, who was doing a knockoff of Art Carney's character from "The Honeymooners." Justin Timberlake provides the voice of Boo Boo, and instantly wipes out all the good feelings I had about his burgeoning acting career after "The Social Network."

If you remember, Yogi is "smarter than the average bear," and traipses around Jellystone Park with Boo Boo scheming up ways to steal food from visiting humans. Yogi has a major craving for, as it comes out in his rollicking speech, "pick-a-nick baskets."

Tom Cavanaugh plays Head Ranger Smith, who inherited his post from his father and has spent his whole life learning the ins and outs of Jellystone. Alas, attendance has been dropping for years, and his only companionship is dimwitted Ranger Jones (T.J. Miller), who's a rookie but already has eyes on the top job.

Things get shaken up with the arrival of Rachel (Anna Faris) -- or, as Yogi dubs her, "movie-maker lady." She wants to film a documentary about Jellystone's famous talking bear. Though I don't know how famous he can be if nobody comes to the park to see him.
Needless to say, Ranger Smith and Rachel are soon making moony eyes at each other.
The evil mayor (Andrew Daly) is facing a shortfall, and wants to close down Jellystone and auction off its prime acres to the timber company. So it's up to Yogi, Rachel, Smith and Boo Boo to come up with the cash.

Now, think about that last paragraph. The mayor of a city is going to shut down a massive park encompassing thousands of acres? What kind of park like that is inside municipal limits? And even if it were, Jellystone (a parody of Yellowstone) is clearly a national park under federal jurisdiction.

This movie is dumb, dumb, dumb. At 80 minutes long, it felt like eternity sitting through it. My advice: Run. Run now. If your kids really want to see Yogi Bear, show them some of the Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

1 star out of four