| Warner Bros. | Release Date: March 29, 2018 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
33
Mixed:
22
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
Mar 26, 2018
Mar 29, 2018
I don’t know how he does it, or for that matter why, but Spielberg turns Ready Player One into something that’s both nostalgic and new, something impersonal yet uniquely his. It is not one of his better movies; it’s probably not even in the top half. It’s way too long and packed with too much extra junk. It is still, somehow, a gas.
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Mar 28, 2018
Never mind the director’s still-prodigious work ethic, the big-screen adaptation of Ernest Cline’s giddily overstuffed, ’80s-saturated best-seller is, in a way, a movie that couldn’t be more bespoke to Spielberg. After all, so many of that decade’s most indelible touchstones poured directly from his brain. It’s the perfect marriage of fabulist and fable.
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Mar 28, 2018
It’s good to see Spielberg, at 71, still finding new forms of cinematic language with which to express his humanism. It also should be said that though Ready Player One wears a cheerful face, there are none of the usual heartwarming, classic Spielberg moments. That’s because, second to “Munich,” this is his most pessimistic film.
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Mar 28, 2018
Spielberg has invested massive creative capital into Ready Player One and the resulting production has all the ingredients viewers expect from potential blockbusters. Whether it achieves the level experienced by Spielberg’s biggest successes remains to be seen, but it is without a question one of the year’s most energetic, visually rewarding, and ultimately exhausting motion pictures.
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Mar 28, 2018
Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, a rollicking virtual-world geekfest flooded by ’80s ephemera, doesn’t just want to wade back into the past. It wants to race into it at full throttle. For those who get their fix through pop nostalgia, “Ready Player One” is — for better or worse — an indulgent, dizzying overdose.
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The PlaylistMar 12, 2018
Mar 12, 2018
Everything in Ready Player One ties together into an action-packed, upbeat, hero’s journey that keeps the film moving along at a thrilling pace. While it’s not particularly emotional and I was disappointed by how many questions are left open by its shallow visits to the real world, it’s still a lot of fun.
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Apr 5, 2018
Mar 28, 2018
Visually, the movie is amazing — jaw-droppingly so. This is as technologically impressive as anything Spielberg has done, if not more so. The story, on the other hand, based on the bestselling novel by Ernest Cline, doesn’t just allow for narrative shortcuts; it practically demands them.
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RogerEbert.comMar 28, 2018
Ready Player One is at once familiar in its fabric and forward thinking in its technology, with a combination of gritty live action and glossy CGI. It’s an ambitious mix that can be thrilling while it lasts, and yet it fails to linger for long afterward, leaving you wondering what its point is beyond validating the insularity of ravenous fandom.
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Movie NationMar 27, 2018
I didn’t dislike “Player One,” even if I rolled my eyes at the low-hanging fruit one-liners and cloying characters, the on-the-nose soundtrack tunes (Van Halen?), the cringe-worthy avatars from your favorite horror movies, all introduced to the giggles and applause of an audience sure it’s in on the joke. Because the movie was concocted to elicit just that reaction.
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Mar 29, 2018The GuardianMar 28, 2018
It’s a film in which Spielberg’s traditional reverence for the wonder and idealism of youth has had to compromise with wised-up survivalist toughness of the new YA mode. But what extraordinary visuals this films conjures up, with images that appear and disappear like quicksilver memes.
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Mar 26, 2018
Jun 4, 2020
An even more callow cousin to Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin, Ready Player One combines motion-capture performance with state-of-the-art animation to free the filmmaker from the constraints of the traditional, live-action format. Yet form seems to be about all the movie is really interested in.
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Mar 28, 2018
Ready Player One has no obligation to be a rigorous intellectual exercise, even if it amounts to a wasted opportunity to explore who else might steer tech, and society, toward greater equity. But it doesn’t have to be so facile, either. Maybe next time the screenwriters shouldn’t set the difficulty mode to “easy.”
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Mar 12, 2018
The joy of Ready Player One does indeed come from its world-building and kaleidoscopic mashup of pop culture—what Spielberg would likely dub its “movie” elements.... At a certain point, though, Ready Player One wants to be appreciated as a film as well as a movie, no matter what Spielberg says. And that’s where it begins to falter.
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Mar 12, 2018
With Steven Spielberg behind the camera, Ernest Cline’s book had potential to transcend its source material. It’s disheartening that the finished product is little more than the cinematic equivalent of a pop culture mashup tee, which takes cherished icons of film and coats them in garish CGI while clumsily smashing them against one another like a child playing with action figures.
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