Our collective favourite book Wikipedia describes a “popcorn film” as “A motion picture without serious dramatic content, a weighty message, or intellectual depth, which serves simply as enjoyable entertainment”. I couldn’t describe The Fall Guy any better than that. It’s a fun filled action fest with a charismatic Ryan Gosling and insanely likeable Emily Blunt. It looks clean, sounds clean and moves through the pace with only a few speed bumps.
Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) starts of the film with a nice little intro monologue, talking directly to the audience about who he is, a stunt man to the biggest film star in the world, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Through the small world of film, Colt begins to connect with a camera operator with dreams of being a director, Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt). Through the filming of some sort of space man film, they connect further, having a bit of a summer fling. That is until Colt is injured, both physically and “ego-lly”. He disappears from the limelight of stunt work to be a valet, chugging through his new life of safety and boredom, without Jodie.
Then one day he gets a call from Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham) who works with Tom Ryder on all his movies as a producer. She lets Colt know that he’s needed for a movie, a movie being directed by Jodie. Colt’s arrival on set causes some drama with Jodie and reveals a deeper plot involving Tom Ryder, that he of course, must get to the bottom of.
So, very standard story, just throwing a nonsense mystery with clear motivations from each character, coupling that with some funny lines of dialogue and a strong focus on stunts. The film isn’t interested in challenging your idea on anything, maybe just to appreciate stunt performers more, but even then, we’re more focused on the main plot of romance and mystery.
The stunts are impressive though, with high action set pieces, car jumps, boat explosions and some extended and dynamic fight scenes. The editing and camera work is built around the stunts which helps to elevate their prominence in the film.
Ryan Gosling is the star of the film for a reason, carrying that humble confidence that is hard to capture. He balances the vapidity with care for Colt’s character. Giving him that endearing idiot quality that in itself feels cliche in a positive way. He’s easy to like and settle into for the story. Emily Blunt is very likeable in her role, although she gets very little to do with her time on screen, she uses it well and connects with Gosling pretty seamlessly. They match tones and energy when they’re on screen making their relationship easy to root for.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson is just throwing everything at the wall for his portrayal of Tom Ryder, in such a ridiculously self aware way. He’s campy and stupid. Speaking of camp, Hannah Waddingham plays a perfectly cliche producer, with 80s curls and a strong attitude. She is basically a WWE wrestler.
So while The Fall Guy is not going to stick around with me for days on end while I contemplate its intentions, I will very most likely hop on a streaming service one day and excitedly click on this as a throw away two hours.
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