During the Academy Awards this past March, there was a segment where Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt came on stage. They were both bantering with one another about the two films they were in last summer Oppenheimer and Barbie which came out on the same day July 21st. It spawned the whole Barbinheimer phenomenon.  Their banter led to a discussion about stuntmen and women and how they were the backbone of Hollywood.  I thought for sure they were going to announce two new Oscar categories for stunt people, but they didn’t. This was just to celebrate Stunt People and their new movie coming out soon, The Fall Guy. This is based on the 80s television show of the same name starring Lee Majors. The movie is finally here, and this is my review. 

Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) is just your run-of-the-mill stuntman in Hollywood. He doubles for Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor Johnson) who is a bit of a pompous ass. Gosling’s character gets by though because he has a thing for the director of photography played by Emily Blunt. When an accident on set happens that injures Gosling’s character very badly, he disappears for a year. While he’s gone he’s parking cars for a living. He gets a call from the producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham) to come back to a movie set because they need the best stuntman in the business. Little does he know that this was just so he could investigate the disappearance of the star actor Tom Ryder. 

This movie is a love letter to Hollywood and to specifically stuntmen and women who are the backbone of the industry. I was kidding around in my opening paragraph about stunt people not having an Academy Award for themselves,  but it’s not funny. They even joke about it in the film. David Leitch who was once a stuntman himself shows why this under-appreciated part of movie making is so important. He literally has Gosling and every other character in the movie jumping, falling down, and getting hit, punched, or kicked every chance he could get in this film. It’s filled with crazy action scenes and fight sequences that will have your head spinning while watching this movie that shows how much he cares about the stunt community in Hollywood. 

The movie has a specific interest in showing a romance between the two main characters. Gosling and Blunt have amazing chemistry opposite one another. At first, it’s a shy wink or look, but later it’s witty banter and plenty of one-liners.  Once Blunt’s character becomes the director of her own film she takes a lot of her frustration out on Gosling’s character for disappearing for a year. She soon gets over it when she realizes that he is the answer to her prayers. He Helps get the movie she’s working on made, while the main star is a wall. It’s an uneasy relationship, but they soon realize the chemistry is too much to ignore.  They are totally head over heels for each other, but there’s an elephant in the room and that is the mysterious disappearance of the star actor. That comes first in their eyes. 

Leitch shows his love of Hollywood and stunts people pretty blatantly in this film.  Dan Tucker (Winston Duke) is the head stuntman on the film sets. He has a great working relationship with Gosling’s character. They quote lines from other hit Hollywood films while working together on their current movie and helping each other figure out what is going on involving the disappearance of Johnson’s character. These scenes involve a phone which to some extent is a Macguffin. The personal assistant of Johnson’s character played by Stephanie Hsu has a part to play in this as well. The mystery leads to some crazy action sequences which had the audience, I was in, laughing very noticeably. It was a laugh riot at times, but the action scenes were jaw-dropping.

The Fall Guy is trying to be two things at once and doesn’t succeed as much as it’s trying to. Drew Pearce and Glen A Larson do their best to combine action films and rom-com’s together here but don’t get to the level of some of the great action rom-com like True Lies, Romancing the Stone, or Mr. Mrs. Smithe for that matter. It’s not because the banter between Gosling and Blunt isn’t good or the action and fight scenes aren’t good, it’s because the combination of the two doesn’t work that well. This film can’t decide what’s more important than the other. Together they don’t work great. I’m not saying they don’t work at all, they just could have worked a little bit better in my eyes. I was laughing a bit, but not as much as I wanted to. The best parts were the action scenes for me. I was sitting still most of the time while others were laughing profusely.  It just was as funny a movie as I had hoped it would be. Maybe that’s my expectations getting the better of me. Who knows?

I’m a big fan of music in movies and this one has a few instances where music comes in perfectly. More than once a song from Kiss plays called “I Was Made For Lovin You” which I smiled every time because it was placed at great moments in the film. In another sequence  “Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now) by Genesis plays. I am achuge Genesis fan and this was a great moment for me. Also the theme of the classic Fall Guy show was printed in . The music in the movie truly ment something. It wasn’t there just fun of it. It added to the film in a good way.

The Fall Guy is a thoroughly entertaining film. It’s a love letter to Hollywood movie making and the stunt community  as a whole. The action scenes, especially one involving a dump truck, were amazing. The chemistry between Gosling and Blunt was good, but I wished it had been a little better. There were plenty of nods to the original 80s Fall Guy as well as Miami Vice and many movies from the past. The cast,  Waddingham, Hsu, Duke and Johnson, including the two stars were good, but mostly a little over the top. There were times when they seemed like they were taking their roles seriously and others where they seemed like they were all just having fun at the expense of the audience watching in the theater. This isn’t a great movie, but it’s a good one that people will flock to this summer. There isn’t much else to see in regards to blockbuster summer fair so this should do good for Leitch and company as well as Universal Pictures.

4/5  stars

Dan Skip Allen