Give charisma bombs like Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt just good-enough material and you can get away with a lot. And so the clunky plotting and thin characterization of The Fall Guy melt away in the face of their repartee—and Gosling’s gamesmanship in particular. In this loose adaptation of the 1980s television series of the same name, he plays Colt Seavers, a veteran Hollywood stuntman recovering from a career-threatening injury and a failed romance with Blunt’s Jody Moreno, a cinematographer. Hired—without Jody’s knowledge—for stunt work on her directorial debut, Colt learns that he’s actually been brought on board to track down the film’s star, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). (Colt used to double for Ryder, who has gone AWOL.) None of this is very cleanly told in Drew Pearce’s screenplay. Instead, The Fall Guy’s pleasures are in its asides and details: Colt and Jody dissecting their relationship via megaphones on the set; Colt’s continually frustrated quest for a decent cup of coffee; and the amusing, behind-the-scene particulars of Metalstorm—Jody’s space-cowboy love story (which actually looks like it could be pretty fun). Meanwhile, director Davie Leitch—the stuntman turned action auteur behind the likes of Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw—makes sure that the punches, falls, crashes, and explosions all get their due (though in a perfect world this is a movie that would have banned the use of green screens entirely). So no, The Fall Guy isn’t perfect, but as a crowd-pleasing, romantic action comedy, driven by the magnetism of its stars, it feels like an increasingly rare treat.
(5/10/2024)
