Gosling and Blunt can’t save this reboot of The Fall Guy

Anyone who grew up in the 1980s may vaguely recall The Fall Guy, a goofy show about a Hollywood stunt performer called Colt Seavers (played by Lee Majors) who moonlights as a bounty hunter and uses the skills of his day-job to track down criminals.

It’s easy to see why stuntmanturned-director David Leitch (Bullet Train) might want to revive it as a vehicle for Ryan Gosling.

Re-imagining the TV show as an action-heavy rom-com, the film casts Gosling as Seavers. No longer a bounty hunter, he’s now an ex-stuntman who becomes unwittingly embroiled in a murder-mystery when the insecure, Tom Cruise-esque movie star he used to double (played here by Aaron Taylorjohnson) disappears from the set of his latest film. Called in by the film’s producer (Hannah Waddington) to once again be his stunt double and help find him, he reluctantly agrees to come out of retirement when he realises the film’s director is Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), the ex he’s been pining for since injuring himself and leaving the industry in shame.

The plot – and there’s a lot of it – consciously borrows from a variety of sources, most amusingly the largely forgotten Jeff Bridges film Against All Odds. Sadly none of it hangs together, something that Drew Pearce’s script – which does have moments of inspiration – acknowledges by having characters comment on story problems the film-within-thefilm is having, a gag deployed so often it’s like watching a standup comedian explain every joke in their routine.