User reviews

I'm a fun loving person. Yes, I like to read William Faulkner, but I also like to read P. G. Wodehouse. Yes, I like David Lynch, but I also like "The Naked Gun." I too crave fun, escapist entertainment that I don't have to think too hard about.

So then I go out to see a movie that promises to be just that, and I get a movie like "The Fall Guy." A movie so slapped together and terrible it's like its makers assumed the audience for it would be so stupid and undiscriminating that it would be entertained by any old crap thrown up on the screen.

If I taught a film class, I would actually use "The Fall Guy" as an example of the importance of a good screenplay. It's not like there isn't talent assembled for this film. It has appealing actors. It has cool action sequences. But it has an absolutely dreadful screenplay. It's just random stuff happening to the point that you don't care about any of it. Sometimes it can seem like certain kinds of comedies and action movies don't need strong screenplays in the way that more serious movies do, until you see one that has really bad writing, and then you realize how much good writing was going into those other movies that are so much better.

Ugh, what an utter waste of time.

Grade: D.

Turns out it was the latter...

Yep, it was quite a stinker. It's basically just a romcom... without the com. Not through lack of trying mind you. It tries so hard to be fun and funny, but outside of a couple of sporadic smiles and the occasional light-hearted 'hmph', it just fell completely flat for me.

The characters are so sickly sweet and the romance aspect just isn't engaging at all... and that's all you get for the first half of the film. It's well over an hour before the first taste of intrigue enters the picture, and even that sub-story feels predictable and undercooked.

This is likely due to the clichéd and contrived screenplay. Writer Drew Pierce (from whom I've enjoyed Mission Impossible Rogue Nation and Hotel Artemis) clearly loves movies and really wants you to know it, trying to take a meta approach and I do like the fact he shines a light on the stunt profession and BTS crew... but it all just feels superficial and shallow. He also loves to name-drop other (better) movies which came across a bit pretentious, and there's even an ongoing gag where one character tests Ryan Gosling's character by working in famous lines from other movies. This could have been fun if they weren't so obvious and overall seemed like a wasted gimmick. This is indicative of how the film plays out as a whole. There also a gimmick using the movie they're making as allegory for their relationship that is excruciating to endure, and the movie itself looks so incredibly trashy that it makes you want to root for its demise. I think it was trying to be satirical, but if so it wasn't carried through to the rest of the picture and just felt out of place.

I think it's wildly misdirected by David Leitch, who I typically enjoy, but here he just doesn't succeed in balancing the romance, comedy and action, and the resultant movie has a very weird tone throughout. There are some brief flashes of ok action, but usually felt sluggish and oftentimes a bit cartoony.

Overall, there I have very little praise for this movie and consider it a huge misfire, blurring the line between bad and just downright awful.

Note: the above review is my personal opinion and is not intended to be reflective or better than your own. For what its worth, I certainly seem to be in the minority on this one.

Here's my gripe with this movie: it's about 40 minutes too long, the pacing is all over the place and it has no idea what kind of movie it wants to be. It wasn't particularly funny, I chuckled about 4 times. It didn't really work as an action movie, because the bulk of the action takes place in the final 20 or so minutes, and the couple of fights and chases which come earlier are separated by long dull scenes of dialog. Sooooooooo much bland dialog. A chase scene which repeatedly cuts to people talking... and not in a funny or meaningful way. A scene where I though "They're talking about split screen, and this is shown to us in split screen, that's pretty neat"... but the scene kept on going and going without doing anything for the plot. I found myself looking at my watch and thinking "We're 30 minutes in, and virtually nothing has happened yet". That turned into an hour. Then 1 hour and 30. OK, now they're finally ramping up things. Yeah.

Blunt's is utterly wasted in this film. She could have been replaced by a faceless voice a'la "Bullet Train" and it would have made very little difference. Palmer was decent (didn't even recognize her right away), but she had only like 5 minutes of screen time. Taylor-Johnson did an OK job as the arrogant movie star whom Gosling's character doubles, but he was missing for half of the movie, so didn't really make up for the blandness of pretty much everyone else. And that includes Gosling. There were several well placed cameos, but those were too short to elevate the movie in any significant way.

As they're both adaptations of 80's TV shows where comedy mixes with action, then it's worth comparing "The Fall Guy" to 2010's "The A-Team". Yes, that movie is not well regarded, but frankly speaking it was way more entertaining than what I watched in the cinema today. The dialog was way tighter and served a purpose, the romantic interest wasn't just a pretty face, it fully embraced it's ridiculous premise and actually had charismatic main characters. All things which "Fall Guy" misses.

TL;DR: save your money and wait until the movie reaches streaming services. Then you can watch it while doing chores etc, and have the option to zone out during the many many many boring bits.

Well, the trailer was promising. Very promising. Which probably had set my expectations high - but I wouldn't say they were too high. And in some areas, they were fulfilled - the stuntman work (and problems and lack of recognition) are actually all done very well, it's the most enjoyable part of the movie.

Sadly, for me that was the only enjoyable part of the movie, too. The characters are written haphazardly, and portrayed even more so - as if they were asked to make it look natural, but it just made it awkward. All the jokes and supposedly comedic situations fall flat because they look and sound awkward, so do the dialogs, so does the plot - so while it looks pretty, it feels just odd. And not quirky or excitingly odd - the forced-conversation-of-people-stuck-in-elevator odd.

Oh well.

The Yanks need to try and learn from Brits how to do comedy. I know its meant to be fun but the combination of so called wisecracks/action and romance is about as enjoyable as liver sandwiches. Goslin, if chocolate, would eat himself. Nothing is believable, the script is amateurish and the characters very, very weak. The whole theatre where i saw this were happy to get out. Only Americans, and I honestly mean this, could enjoy this very, very bad movie. If there may be one thing that I could take away from the viewing is how incredibly difficult and dangerous a job that stunt people actually perform... just wasted two hours!

This movie tries very, VERY hard to be funny, and it has the acting talent to be. Both the wife and I are huge fans of Blunt, and I have found Gosling quite tolerable in many efforts, including forgiving him for his turn in Blade Runner.

But alas, it is marred by a nonsensical script, a fascination with its own subject, a lack of reflective (i.e. Funny) humor that too often tends toward slapstick (little wonder given the stunt theme), and a reliance on absurd and pointless action (ditto).

As the over-extended Gosling struggles through the nonsense, I glanced at my watch numerous times, hoping in vain (and in sync with the underused Blunt character) it would not end in a slushy BS and they lived happily ever after nonsense, which seemed increasingly looming over the end. I won't spoil the non-existent "surprise" but say that it's all a largely pointless waste of time, so unless you have something better to do, like reflect with sadness on Blunt's career, you can probably spend your 2h more productively. And you should.

I went in hoping for a fun 2 hours, but no.

Terrible direction, confusing dialogue, script chaotic, editting poor, production actually 3rd rate, repetitious.

I almost walked out. Wish I had.

I had hopes this would be fun, but the whole setup is very confusing, undirected plot, and direction is abysmal; none at all it seems.

No real humour, and the characters are all totally flat, not an interesting or sympathetic one in the bunch. I could not empathise with a single character. All cardboard cutouts ugh.

Lots of chaotic "action" proving nothing, going nowhere, informing nothing. Ugh

What a disappointment in every way.

Here are the Pros: 1.) It's a decent storyline, adapted from the original with Lee Majors, and has a ton of action. That's an excellent start. 2.) Ryan Gosling plays it out very well & is fun to watch. Five stars for him, I say! 3.) I love that our whole family could watch it. Family-friendly is the way to make a ton of money on a movie (looking at you, Top Gun Maverick!) Now for the Con, and it's a really, really big one: It hits a wall with the absolutely stupid, unbelievable dialogues, especially between Ryan Gosling & Emily Blunt. The bad script writing did the film a major disservice. With better writing, this really could have been a huge box office hit.

Because this movie is so terrible. Emily Blunt tries, Ryan Gosling tries even harder, and okay they have great chemistry on screen. Unfortunately that's not enough to save a really poor screenwriting and bad direction. The movie is a complete mess, and not in a good way, like Mad Max Kind of way, but in a way that nothing really connects. It gets from boring action to desperately trying to get the comedian out of Gosling's character, except that nothing the characters say is funny. I could barely make till the end of the movie. All I want is to forget I saw some of my favorite actors in this terrible movie.

After watching this movie, I feel quite duped since I was persuaded to watch it based on the high ratings. Reviewers of this film either have very low expectations or the reviews are simply fake. Either way it's 2 hours I'll never get back. If you like B grade films with non-stop stunts that fail to disguise a woeful script (AI script writing would at least partly explain), paired with zero chemistry between the leads and phoned in performances from all, then you have the makings for a truly awful film. It's harmless enough, but it's boring, you can feel how little effort went into making it because it just doesn't grab your attention, in fact you're struggling all the way through to stay focused and failing. If you're someone who expects to be engaged and entertained by a film, do yourself a favour and give this one a miss otherwise don't say I didn't warn you.

I watched the movie without any expectations. Apart from the introduction and final scene, nothing of note was seen.

Boring dialogues. I would never play Emily in Blunt's films, especially if I were a director. I got so bored watching such a boring character.

The only thing keeping the movie afloat was Ryan Gosling. For his sake, the movie was watched and continued, but no, it didn't catch on.

The $130 million budget was wasted. As can be seen from his earnings, his hands appear to have exploded.

He says there is comedy in the movie, but he couldn't make anyone laugh in any of the dialogues. It says there is drama, but there is no middle ground, love, even the lovemaking scene at the end was soulless in my opinion. I think Emily Blunt caused this.

It's not often that I stop watching a movie 20 or 30 minutes in, but this is one of those movies.

I've read a number of reviews trying to understand why it's rated so highly, but in my opinion, this was just a bad movie.

I could tell that this was - in a sense - a nod to all those hard working stunt people on movies, and from that angle, it works.

But the two main characters, along with the supporting characters and the story line, was just dreadful. And by dreadful, I mean, dreadful. Nothing between the two main characters was convincing, despite what some other reviews might say. It was a movie that tried to be funny, and quirky, but it fell flat just like...well, I won't give it away.

If I had to choose between using sandpaper on my eyes or watching this movie again, I'd choose to sandpaper my eyes because it would be a much more enjoyable experience.

WOW!!! What a boring movie about a stuntman. I never thought watching a movie about a stuntman would put me to sleep. It's kind of ironic, they made a crappy movie while pretending to make a crappy movie. Scientifically this would be crap squared, or crap to the power of two more craps.

They did something with the audio where the dialogue sounds really low and as if it was all recorded in a sound booth. Mix this in with Emily Blunt's heavy British accent and I couldn't understand a word she says. Plus, she mumbles to herself in order to seem complex, which make it impossible to understand a single word she says.

The trailer makes it seem like a fast paced, comedic action movie but it's really a slow burn, to your eyes and ears, with Ryan Gosling narrating in a monotone voice.

Skip this boring artsy movie and watch the old Fall Guy TV show. It's a lot better than this movie.

There is nothing against a mainstream blockbuster movie, there's is also nothing wrong with making entertainment for an all-world audience, whose expected quality level, as we have seen over the last few years, is going down a long way. Everyone feels differently about entertainment. But why a film like this can get 7.2 points does surprise me. It's actually enough to watch the last 10-15 minutes and you've seen the whole film, which is clearly too long and above all too trivial. It's a shame, also for these excellent actors, who have absolutely thrilled me elsewhere and have really given their very best here too. But the script itself is far too weak to stand up even to those top class actors.

The fact that this crap has an average of 7 only confirms what I've been thinking for years, mainstream American cinema is scum because the level of the public is increasingly lower, the tastes of the average spectator are increasingly disgusting, this film represents everything what is most squalid in Hollywood today, low-grade vulgar humor, hateful and stupid characters, lots of cheap action shot even badly.

I am saddened that two excellent actors like Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling stooped to this. I console myself with independent cinema, the only source of quality, but the mainstream must disappear.

I gave up on this film after about half an hour. We were looking for an easy watch and this film was heavily marketed when originally released. The cast also looked impressive. Things started OK, however the plot became very ridiculous, very quickly.

The moment Emily Blunt started making her feelings known (via a megaphone) to the whole movie set I knew this wasn't for me. Who would do this!??

We kept watching for a bit but the storyline was so ridiculous that it was too difficult to suspend that much belief.

The film looked great and the budget must have been high, however I couldn't get past the first 30 minutes.

This is overly long and the schtick gets old really fast. Most of the audience will tire of watching silly characters spewing childish dialogue over and over then popping in a stunt here and there to fill the voids.

Some of the stunts are good, but the overall movie is just a poor vision to highlight the stunt man job. It was frustrating to watch such silly characters even more when I like the actors.

Mostly a childish movie. 3/10 for the stunts, not much else.

This is overly long and the schtick gets old really fast. Most of the audience will tire of watching silly characters spewing childish dialogue over and over then popping in a stunt here and there to fill the voids.

Some of the stunts are good, but the overall movie is just a poor vision to highlight the stunt man job. It was frustrating to watch such silly characters even more when I like the actors.

Mostly a childish movie. 3/10 for the stunts, not much else.

Talk about a movie that's supposed to be good entertainment as it has plenty of stunts and comedy and romance between the characters that seem as hollow as the modern Hollywood. It's exactly the opposite of what people criticize Marvel movies for yet it ends up being quite "Marvel"-esque with non stop yapping and sparkly colored visuals style being passed on as comedy. It's got good reviews by most others as it seems, yet it performed poorly at the box office. Some blame its unnecessarily huge budget, but this movie is PG 13, the previous David Leitch movie, Bullet Train was rated R, had more well known "stars" and was released closer to pandemic times yet that one did quite very well.

Something's definitely off putting about The Fall Guy as I find it hard to believe that people's standards of movie have gone so low they consider this enjoyment. All the crap surrounding the celebration of stunt people and them not being valued by Oscars, it feels wasted here as action in this one is seriously lacking some power. Maybe an R rated version really could have jolted the fun factor. Regardless, the characterization and story of this movie lead it down and it would not have felt so bad if it wasn't dragged out that much, ffs it's bland and spews boredom for 2 hours.

I'll echo that the plot was thin, and the acting was subpar especially from these seasoned professionals. But the most troublesome part for me was the dialogue: It was banal at best but most of the time, CRINGE. Truly. I wonder if the actors even read the script before signing on. I was actually embarrassed for them. I almost turned it off, but thought " it has to get better". And it did. It finally delivered something of consequence. Unfortunately, it was the behind-the-scenes footage they showed when the credits were rolling. I never thought I would say this about a movie, but I was truly angry when this thing ended. I'll never get those two hours of my life back.

Unfortunately David Leitch is getting plaudits for films that the actors are being forced to try to save because he is incapable of Directing to a decent standard, as David Leitch does not care about if the story makes sense or if the character motivations make sense, so there will then be a huge part of the audience who won't enjoy his films.

Special effects, stunts & action can be the icing on the cake, however if the actual cake ( = story foundation & heart of the project ) is badly constructed & not made with real care, then people are not going to come back & buy more as if I see this guy directing another movie now I will not be watching unless after the film has come out I hear he has finally realised quality story telling should be his priority ( as it seems he doesn't think it matters & to some of the film's audience they obviously just like seeing stunts, explosions & nonsensical action & can be satisfied - however a huge number like me are not ).

Unlike "Deadpool 2" ( Ryan Reynolds saved, though the film would have been much better with a better Director I think, as obviously Ryan Reynolds kept it watchable ), plus "Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw" ( Dwayne Johnson & Jason Statham saved as best they could ) & even just about "Bullet Train" ( Brad Pitt made it worth watching once ). Unfortunately David Leitch did not learn his lessons & this time Ryan Gosling & Emily Blunt could not save this fiasco as is a real shame because I loved the original TV show which had much better scripts than this & obviously better Directors who understand story is 1st.

All the films I mentioned above did need better scripts to be much better, however the scripts they did have or could have, also need a good Director who understands that to reach all the audience your first priority must be to ensure the story will engage all the audience to help them really care about the characters & then as the story unfolds no matter how potentially out there the story may go the character motivations & acting keep the audiences disbelief suspended so they can accept it & thus stay completely engrossed in the story & enjoy it ).

The Fall Guy film fails badly with it's story + directing.

Hopefully producers & the other people putting their money & effort into these films will see the need for the best writers & directors to be used & not keep using the ones who just don't understand the importance of the story - as no one wants to see a sequel to this film now.

The other films above that have sequels ( in production ) realised that the next films they did or do in the series needed better scripts & Directing thus why Hobbs & Shaw 2 they are going for Louis Leterrier ( this is a gamble, though I prefer him to David Leitch after this ).

" Deadpool & Wolverine" ( = "Deadpool 3" ) realised that they needed a better Director & went with Shawn Levy which is a huge upgrade as a Director as it seems that Shawn Levy has really improved as a Director so I do hold out hope for other upcoming Directors such as David Leitch that eventually the penny will drop & they will all re-evaluate their work & realise to reach all of the people that they need to tick every box. They really must start with great story telling & helping the audience to care about the characters in the movie so you want to go on the journey with them, rooting for them or against them but you have to help people care with your Direction ).

Well I went into this movie thinking High Hopes was filmed here in Australia. I'm an Australian thought it would be okay. Some good actors. The first five minutes was okay then. It just got plain boring. I got lost with the plot. Didn't have a clue what was going on, yeah there was plenty of action. Nothing wrong with that maybe too much action yeah I know it's about stuntman but still. I was Dozing off halfway through the movie milt date was on the phone playing games. That's how bad this movie was .The plot was really hard to follow as mentioned before the action sequences were very good but the whole gist of the movie lost me after 10 minutes a couple of cameos towards the end with Lee Majors Heather Thomas from the original full guy TV series Didn't even save this movie. Save your cash.