Review of Ready Player One (2018) by Wiscojoe — 11 Apr 2018

Sterile, insipid, and entirely phony, 'Ready Player One' is a simulacrum of far superior films, Spielberg and otherwise. The movie (full-length cutscene?) works best when it embraces its artifice and dives deep into an uncanny valley that has never looked and felt more canny.

The actors are mostly bland, overly-pretty, flatly sincere agents of wish-fulfillment, except for an incredibly realized performance from Mark Rylance and a much-welcomed late appearance from Lena Waithe.

The nostalgic score is dreadfully out-of-place, doing its best to recreate the schmaltzy John Williams retro glow of early Spielberg but instead contrasting badly with the post-apocalyptic trappings and the implied social commentary.

And that's the ultimate problem with this visually stunning but half-baked movie: it is too caught up in its own manufactured nostalgia to have any concern for the present or the future. That inherent conflict between sentimentality and forward-progress is essential to the underlying story, but here it is rendered into a meandering mush more concerned with expensive "gee-whiz" effects and cheap "awwww"-inducing pop culture references.