Our hero, Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), lives in a teetering trailer park called “The Stacks.” He escapes into Oasis to live as his alter ego, Parzival, play with his friends and of course, hunt for the egg. He scours the recorded memories Halliday left behind for clues, memorizing his favorite movies, video games and TV shows for anything to indicate how to beat the game. But it’s not until he starts reading between the lines that things start to come into focus.
The execution of “Ready Player One” is indisputable, a big, beautiful fantasy. On a large format IMAX screen, the Oasis is a technological marvel, the CGI avatars astonishing. But the story, as adapted by Cline and Zak Penn, is as flimsily constructed as The Stacks. What’s missing are the stakes. Our heroes have no backstory and little arc. We follow them as they battle their way through a game so they can become the major shareholders of a tech company. It tricks you into thinking it has the stakes, distracting with the old razzle dazzle.
There’s also a serious problem with regard to the way fan culture is presented. While it pretends to be a tribute, it’s actually the nail in the coffin. With this film, the fanboy has officially jumped the shark. Here, all pop culture from the late 20th century and early 21st is lumped into one indistinguishable mob, from “Back to the Future” to ’60s Batman to “The Shining” to “Beetlejuice” to “Lord of the Rings.” It’s not about hooking obsessively into one thing, but about mastering everything, and the notion loses all meaning.
As avatars battle, exploding into coins as they digitally die, there’s a creeping sense of existential dread for the soul of “Ready Player One,” which isn’t nearly as radical as it thinks it is. When the dust is settled, it’s just a shifting of power. The system stays the same. Spielberg and his team may have pored over the texture, richness and detail of this world, this game, but not the characters, or their story within it.
MOVIE REVIEW
“Ready Player One”
Grade: C+
Starring Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke and Lena Waithe. Directed by Steven Spielberg.
Rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action violence, bloody images, some suggestive material, partial nudity and language. Check listings for theaters. 2 hours, 20 minutes.
Bottom line: The game has a richness, but the storyline is a lemon.
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