Ready Player One: Steven Spielberg Takes You Back to the Future #book2movies [review]

When I leaving the theater last week—I’d been to see A Wrinkle in Time before writing up my take on the movie—a couple of employees, guys in their early twenties, walked by carrying their brooms and long-handled dustpans.  

‘‘Are you excited about Ready Player One?’’ one asked the other. 
“Oh man, yes! I can’t wait.’’
“Me too. I think it’s going to be like back when we were kids, you know? Like we’ll be right back there.’’

They continued, on their way to clean up the theater, grinning happily like a couple of kids. 
Judging from Indiewire’s review of the movie due out March 29, those two young men will get their way.

“This is a typical boy’s movie that will strike younger audiences as being out of sync with the current moment’’

 I’ve pulled some paragraphs from the piece and included the link to the entire review below. 

“Never, ever underestimate Steven Spielberg. That’s the biggest takeaway from “Ready Player One,” an immersive sci-fi spectacle about a future overrun by virtual reality gaming, and the world’s most famous commercial director has transformed it into a mesmerizing blockbuster steeped in callbacks to the best of them. It runs too long and drags a bunch in its final third, but make no mistake: This is Spielberg’s biggest crowdpleaser in years, a CGI ride that wields the technology with an eye for payoff. It’s also his most stylized movie since “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence,” though a lot more fun, with a cavalcade of visuals leaving the impression that he watched a bunch of Luc Besson movies and decided he could outdo them all. The result is an astonishing sci-fi spectacle and a relentless nostalgia trip at once.

“You think I’m just a corporate asshole,” Nolan says, and Spielberg may as well be saying the same thing to a skeptical audience: On paper, “Ready Player One” certainly looks like another ill-conceived Hollywood product, but this 71-year-old Hollywood veteran is determined to make something better than that. The movie’s greatest sequence is a prolonged homage to Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” too rich with details to spoil here, but needless to say, this is not a brainless blockbuster so much as an attempt to elevate the blockbuster form in its own language.

Eventually, “Ready Player One” becomes the very thing its characters admire, a preponderance of commercial entertainment smashed together into singular blockbuster chaos. Spielberg’s roving digital camera (for the first time, this celluloid fetishist has reason to abandon ship) is aided by effective motion-capture performances and ever-changing landscapes. None of that changes the retrograde gender politics: This is a typical boy’s movie that will strike younger audiences as being out of sync with the current moment (just imagine what might happen if Waithe and Sheridan traded places), but then, so’s the nostalgia-laden Oasis.

“Ready Player One” is one of the more clever excuses to run wild with special effects. Of course, that outcome makes sense from a filmmaker whose entire legacy has been steeped in showmanship. As it cycles through dozens of references to past achievements, “Ready Player One” amounts to a frenetic attempt at remaking the past 30-odd years of popular culture by one of its greatest architects. Without seeing the movie, it’s hard to imagine anyone could turn it into a satisfying product; by the end, it’s clear that only Steven Spielberg can.

Here’s the trailer 

Read the entire review at IndieWire.