Movie review: ‘The Fall Guy’ jumpstarts the summer movie season

When April meets May, the unofficial summer movie season kicks off, ending a long and treacherous few months of movie purgatory between the holiday season and summer break.

Around this time, theaters begin to bloom with an abundance of “popcorn flicks” — fun, lighthearted action or comedy movies that serve as a good time out for a wide range of audiences. “The Fall Guy,” the latest film starring Ryan Gosling (“Barbie,” “La La Land”), checks all those boxes as it commences 2024’s summer movie season.

Directed by stuntman-turned-director David Leitch, who oversaw “Deadpool 2” (2018) and “Bullet Train” (2022), “The Fall Guy” co-stars Emily Blunt (“Oppenheimer,” “A Quiet Place), as Jody Moreno, a first-time director in need of a stuntman after her previous one disappeared under mysterious circumstances. This comes in the form of Gosling’s Colt Seavers, who just so happened to date Moreno on a past movie set before he suffered a back-breaking accident performing a stunt and was forced to quit his job.

The awkward romance that still lingers between the duo grows even more complicated when Colt is tasked with tracking down the superstar actor he stunts for, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who also has gone awol.

“The Fall Guy” is Leitch’s love letter to the underappreciated role of the stuntman, a theme that absolutely permeates throughout the 125-minute runtime. Every aspect of the film is over-the-top and in-your-face, from the constant explosions of the stunts to the absurdist subplot of Colt investigating the absence of his missing actor.

Like Leitch’s previous films, particularly “Deadpool 2,” the humor is meta, with Gosling often breaking the fourth wall, as well as the plot centering around the behind-the-scenes of a campy space film that frequently pokes fun at movies like “Dune” and “Mad Max.” The humor works most of the time, though the physical comedy and recurring jokes are more consistent than the one-liners, which sometimes fall flat.

It’s ironic that “The Fall Guy” starts off with Gosling’s character breaking his back, because Gosling’s back must hurt from carrying the film. He and Blunt both put in excellent performances, and no one would expect any less after their respective Oscar nominations for “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.” The pair has innate chemistry that sustains the movie and keeps audiences entertained in a surprisingly touching romance.

“The Fall Guy” is at its best when Leitch takes a step back from directing the written quips and lets Gosling drive the movie forward with his natural charisma, but runs into issues when it gets too caught up in replicating the success of Leitch’s prior films.

In particular, Colt’s meta dialogue often seems like it was written for Ryan Reynolds, the star of “Deadpool” who is infamous for breaking character and the fourth wall, instead of Gosling. Gosling fits much better into the role of the character than Reynolds would, so it’s a shame that there’s a dissonance that lingers over the movie when it becomes obvious that some of Colt’s character quirks weren’t molded for the “right” Ryan.

In addition to the sometimes half-baked jokes, the CGI for “The Fall Guy” is genuinely awful, although it doesn’t necessarily always detract from the experience. Most of the time, it adds to the tacky charm of the backstage comedy; however, there are points at which it seems pretty ironic that a movie about stuntmen relies so heavily on computer-generated action.

All in all, “The Fall Guy” is a refreshing, digestible action-romcom that highlights an unsung subgroup of Hollywood glamor. The movie doesn’t quite know when to step off the brakes at times with its layered plot and barrage of banter, but it’s hard not to have a fun time sitting in a theater with a full bucket of popcorn watching Gosling — and his stuntman — set themselves on fire, bungee jump off buildings and drive cars over cliffs.

Rating: 3/5