Ready player one
How does Spielberg’s nostalgia-fest hold up on the small screen?
How do we start to make this movie? What do we do first?” It’s somehow reassuring to hear that even Steven Spielberg gets the jitters sometimes. Still, you can feel his pain: novelist Ernest Cline’s hymn to the Atari era is a mighty mountain to climb, demanding technical finesse, industry clout (all those copyrighted bits, bobs and Batmobiles) and more coin than you’d find scattered on the winds of Planet Doom.
Of course, Spielberg has all of the above – but it’s still some achievement that he wrestled RPO to the screen in such tautly rendered form. This could have been Spielberg’s grandest folly since 1941 – instead, it’s a spiritual cousin to the underrated A.I. (2001), with similarly curious tonal shifts from sadness to exuberance. Mostly the latter wins out, especially as the action pushes towards the final IP-crazed battle, which feels like a cross between a GAME store and a riot in Hall H.
Smaller spectacles dazzle too – the featurette-centric extras linger on the bit where our Easter-egg-hunting hero, the pixelly Parzival (Tye Sheridan), is projected into the real world.
If, however, you thought the main feature was the ultimate geek-culture celebration, just wait till you see Ernie & Tye’s Excellent Adventure, in which actor grills author on 1980s movies before taking a spin in the latter’s customised, full-sized DeLorean. Great Scott… Matthew Leyland