Free Guy & CODA: A Comedy-Drama Double Feature

Are you in the mood for a fun comedy with some existential rumination? Or are you more in the mood for an uplifting coming-of-age family drama? Why choose, I’ve got two movies you can watch to cover the whole spectrum of human emotion!

CODA: Ruby (Emilia Jones, who I have just discovered is British and also learned American Sign Language in nine months for this film...wow) is the eponymous CODA of the film, i.e. a Child of Deaf Adults. Her parents (played by Marlee Matlin and Tory Kotsur) and older brother (Daniel Durant) are all deaf, so her entire life, she has served as their liaison to the hearing world, translating for them at restaurants and workplaces, and growing up far too quickly as she realizes how cruel the world can be to those who are a little bit different. She was bullied when she first arrived at school because she “talked funny” like the deaf adults who raised her, and this has made her painfully shy and mostly a social outcast, except for her best friend Gertie (Amy Forsyth). But things take a turn when she signs up for the school choir and her teacher, Mr. Villalobos (Eugenio Derbez), sees that she might have a talent worth pursuing.

There are long stretches in this film where the ASL scenes are not captioned, so you are going to watch Ruby and her family signing to each other and other folk and you’ll just have to figure out what’s going on. Turns out that is not too hard to do because people can still be incredibly expressive in ASL, both with their faces and the signs themselves, and you can quickly piece together the crux of the situation. It's a bit like if you're watching a foreign film without captions but can still tell from the actors' tones and expressions what is happening in the scene. I had never fully appreciated what a robust language ASL is before this, and it's a beautiful feat.

Written and directed by Sian Heder, CODA is a wonderful story about a family we don’t ordinarily see on the big screen. It isn't afraid to dabble in gray areas when portraying Ruby's family, who are allowed to be selfish and lusty and problematic and aren't just saintly put-upon deaf folk. They have their own issues and inner lives that they must contend with and much like last year's Sound of Metal, it's refreshing to see such a three-dimensional characterization of members of the deaf community that doesn't paint everyone with the same broad brush. But the storyline with the hearing folk felt much more trite and filled with coming-of-age tropes. There was a sweet but cringey teen romance and Mr. V's mentorship of Ruby was all very convenient and pat. Which ultimately meant that while I liked this movie a lot, I couldn't fully love it. However, it's still well worth your time, and features a performance of one of my all-time favorite songs that I will likely return to time and time again. 

Free Guy: If you've seen the trailer for this film, you should know already if you're the target audience. Ryan Reynolds plays Guy, a character in a violent Grand Theft Auto-esque video game, who has no idea about the nature of his existence until he comes across Millie (played by the wonderful Jodie Comer), a woman from the real world (but...what is the "real world" anyway?) who is roaming around this video game in avatar form to find the definitive proof that the game's inventor, Antwan (a deliciously deranged Taika Waititi), stole the code for this game from one that she and her partner, Walter (the always impressively coiffed Joe Keery), developed years ago. 

Yes, I know that seems like a convoluted and tech-heavy premise, but I promise that the script by Matt Lieberman and Zak Penn deftly lays it all out for any layman to follow with ease and Shawn Levy directs the whole enterprise with an eye to making things zippy and not dense with exposition. Just strap in and enjoy the ride. All the actors are great, with L'il Rel Howery and Utkarsh Ambudkar showing up as well to round out the supporting cast, along with some fun cameos that will leave you chuckling. And the look and feel of this movie is pretty excellent, with the video game world featuring pitch perfect production design and just the right level of visual effects magic.

After we watched this movie, my boyfriend did insist we watch Ready Player One, which he thought was a superior film that this movie aimed to emulate. There are definitely parallels and your mileage may vary depending on how subsumed you are into gamer culture and how exactly you want your pop culture references served up to you. To me, Free Guy is at its best when it's sticking to its original premise and serving up some Truman Show vibes as Guy is faced with the idea that his reality is all the figment of some crazy creator's imagination. Towards the end of the movie, things get a little too cute with references to Marvel and Star Wars that serve as a reminder that this film was distributed by 20th Century Studios which is now a Disney subsidiary and therefore must kowtow to its corporate overlords with all the cross-promotion that money can buy. With Ryan Reynolds as the lead, such shenanigans were also inevitable - maybe if they had cast some indie darling in this role, we would have leaned more into the philosophical conundrums laid out by this whole storyline. But putting capitalism aside, this is exactly what you want from a summer movie. Is it high art? No. But is it solid entertainment with a fun, original idea and an insanely likable cast? You bet.