Review:

Steven Spielberg is a god in movies. A god! Whatever he touches is usually a cinematic experience one can’t forget and usually discuss to length with friends and family and keeps us all mesmerized by the magic he creates. Having said that, he is placed at the highest level imaginable because no one else can do what Mr. Spielberg can. Drama? Let me see, there’s Schindler’s List, Lincoln… Adventure? Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark… Sci Fi? We have E.T., A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) and so on and so forth. The man can do no wrong. So, when he does something like Ready Player One that looks like a winner in the trailer but falls flat in the cinema one would wonder, what went wrong? I’ll tell you what. Now, I’ve never read any of the book so I can’t say what happened in the book but from what I garner, there are loads of materials that wasn’t covered or explained properly in the story that leaves viewers scratching their heads (at least me) wondering: “Who’s that?” “How did they know each other?” “What? They all live in the same area?” I blame this on the screen writer which ironically is also the author of the book. Writing novels and writing screenplays are two different animals. Just because you can do one really well doesn’t necessarily mean that you can also do the other just as well as this movie proved to me without a doubt. There is a unique skill in screen writing that is tough to master because you only have so many lines and dialogue to convey the story. I usually frown on movies over two hours but in this case, I think it would have made more sense to take a gamble and extend it another hour. Yes, it’ll be a 3 hour and 20 minutes long but let’s face it, this is an epic of a story and because we, the audience, were not properly given the exposition required to at least understand where the characters are coming from, it left us feeling numb towards them and the movie as a whole. Visually it was spectacular which is a Steve Spielberg trademark. Sadly, his other trademark was completely ignored which is the emotional pull and connection we feel towards the characters (good guys and bad guys). It came to a point where I was getting dizzy with all the special effects and rather than jumping up and clapping like I normally do during a Steven Spielberg movie, I was asking myself: “ What is the point?”