‘Ready Player One’ a virtual pop flood
In the all-out geek fest Ready Player One, the Bigfoot monster truck and Back to the Future DeLorean speed through Manhattan with a Jurassic Park T. rex and King Kong in hot pursuit. Bailed from this review yet? Still reading? If so, then you might just be able to navigate the multitude of pop-culture references and videogame action of director Steven Spielberg’s bold fantasy adventure ( ★★★☆; rated PG-13; in theaters Thursday). A loving ode to a few decades Spielberg made his own, Ready Player One is an entertaining nostalgia trip that wears its influences proudly but throws them at such dizzying force that sometimes you feel as if you’re buried under Chuck E. Cheese tokens.
Author Ernest Cline co-wrote the adaptation that envisions Ohio circa 2045 as a dystopian place where the trailer parks are vertical stacks of lowrent tenements. Orphaned teen Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) and pretty much everybody else escapes from this squalor by embracing all things 1980s and hooking into a virtual reality game called the OASIS. There, you can shoot stuff on Planet Doom, climb Mount Everest with Batman or, if you’re Wade and his pals, use computer avatars to hunt for a literal Easter egg giving the winner control of this online world plus half a trillion bucks.
Using the code name Parzival, Wade and fellow gunters (aka “egg hunters”) search for clues to three challenges left by the OASIS’ creator, late tech guru James Halliday (Mark Rylance), a socially awkward combo of Steve Jobs and Garth from Wayne’s World. Parzival hooks up with — and falls for — ace gunter Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), but standing in their way is Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), a toothy villain with an evil Superman-esque avatar who becomes a pest in the real world as well.
There’s an overload of virtual visuals. Though some are quite stunning, like the aforementioned high-speed race with thrills and spills (imagine a hyper 8-year-old getting hold of the most insane Hot Wheels stunt set ever) and a sequence set in The Shining’s Overlook Hotel (complete with monster lady, creepy twins and axwielding maniac) that’s the highlight of the entire production.
And if you’ve ever wanted to see Hello Kitty and RoboCop in the same film, Spielberg’s got you covered. The abundance of references isn’t as egregious as it is in the book. Think of it as the Goldilocks and the Three Bears of nerdiness: Some might think there are too many, some might think there are too little, but really it’s just right.
As far as the actual humans in the picture, the CGI avatars of Parzival and Art3mis have more chemistry than Sheridan and Cooke — the result of watching their online selves spend the most time together. Lena Waithe is great in a comic-relief role, both in the flesh as well as in the OASIS.
Rylance doesn’t have a huge part but lends goofy gravitas to a key figure: Amid all the whiz-bang busyness, Halliday is the cryptic, grounded Willy Wonka type who learned the lessons that everyone needs to heed. “As painful as reality is,” he says, “it’s the only place where you can get a decent meal.”
In a way, he’s the avatar of Spielberg, a legend who has given Ready Player One needed soul and a moral for today’s plugged-in society: As mega-cool as stomping around a Mechagodzilla would be, nothing beats being up close and personal with those you cherish.