*dons flame-proof apron, adjusts heat resistant goggles, puts on oven mitts* Let’s do this!

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars

Bottom Line: Two and a half hours of every teenage boy’s masturbatory fantasies. Every bit as juvenile as that sounds.

Ah, nostalgia! Clouding people’s better judgement since…well, forever. Nostalgia is the only thing that “Ready Player One” has going for it and is the only reason I can think of why so many people seem to like this movie. This movie is what happens when you take a book written specifically for adults that love young adult fiction and then water down to nothing whatever weak social commentary was contained in the novel then bulk it up with CGI and special effects. Yes, “Ready Player One” is homeopathic to its core and yet millions still claim it works as a movie.

Where to start? The Girl! Nothing in this movie pissed me off more than The Girl. In fact, all I have to say is The Girl and you probably already have her entire story arc developed in your head, but let’s dive into this shallow pool of character development, shall we? In the virtual OASIS, she is Art3mis, in real life, she is Samantha (Olivia Cooke). Is Art3mis preternaturally cute and elfish? Does The Boy fall in love with The Girl in the virtual world inconceivably fast? Does The Boy want to meet The Girl in real life? Does The Girl warn The Boy that she’s not the same in real life as in the virtual world and possibly kind of ugly? Does The Boy screw up and really piss off The Girl? Do they end up meeting in real life anyway? Is Samantha also preternaturally cute and still kind of elfish? Does The Girl have a “flaw” that makes her ugly the same way Cindy Crawford’s birthmark makes her ugly? Does The Boy get The Girl in the end? You know the answers to these questions. You knew the answers to these questions before I even asked them. That is how little originality there is in this movie when you strip away its shiny veneer.

Then there’s The World. That it is both futuristic and dystopian goes without saying. No one at this point in time is going to believe in a future that ISN’T dystopian. You mean 20 years from now, everything’s still going to be ok and half the people hate our President? Nonsense! It’s going to be anarchy and everyone’s going to hate our conservaliberfascist President. Everyone knows that! That it was painted with such a broad and cartoonish brush is unforgivably lazy. Yes, let’s stack trailers on top of each other in some haphazard way in the middle of a junk yard and only allow access via some assortment of weird Rube Goldberg contraptions. Yes, let’s make all the poor people except The Boy stereotypical white trash yokels. Yes, let’s make the villain an ultra-wealthy corporation hell bent on taking over and monetizing everything that is good and fun in this world. Ok that one rings pretty true…moving on! Yes, let’s have this evil corporation have this really weird monetization model that consists of somehow getting people into debt to them and then kidnapping those people and having them work by earning fake money in the OASIS that can then be turned into real money by some ill-defined process. I think… Maybe…

Then there’s the Big Bad. In this case, the CEO of said evil company, Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn). Never has there been as cartoonisly incompetent of a villain as Sorrento. To give you an of how incompetent, a major plot point entails him leaving his password on a post-it note attached to his impossibly state of the art and top dollar virtual reality rig that some how doesn’t have retina scans or fingerprint sensors or, oh wait, it had both of those things. Hope nobody notices! There is some legitimately funny humor in this movie (though, the stuff people were laughing about had me scratching my head at times), but with this bad guy, the epitome of humor is reduced to the virtual reality equivalent of football to the groin. Actually, I think it was a kick to the groin. And of course there is going to be a sensory cod piece for the CEO to actually feel that for…reasons? And it gets all shiny and lighted up in real life so you can know that he was hit there and it hurt! Disturbingly (and this might have just been my imagination, I am really not sure), Sorrento rips off just the cod piece and I swear they filmed it so it looked like he had an erection underneath. It happens way too quick to be sure, but I was left with the distinct impression of WTF did I just see?!?

I will admit, the effects are pretty cool and the nostalgia stuff is fun. Overblown and not nearly enough to make a decent movie out of, but cool and fun. Other than that, maybe just go play those video games and read those books and watch those movies again instead of watching this movie. Perhaps then you will come to the stark reality that most of that stuff was crap and things are much better now. Well, except for “Ready Player One”.