From Summer to Fall

Now that we're in the final months of 2024, lots of movies I missed in the theater earlier in the year are starting to pop up on various streaming services. I remember during the brief theatrical run of The Fall Guy, the popular consensus seemed to be: "Why is no one going to see this? It's fun and good." But like most people, apparently, I did miss it at the time. Now that I've caught up, I can agree: it's fun and good.

Loosely based on the 1980s TV show of the same name, The Fall Guy follows stuntman Colt Seavers on a wild adventure in Australia. His ex is directing her first major movie, but her star has quietly vanished without a trace. Colt is brought in by the producer to track him down and bring him back to set before the multi-million dollar shoot is derailed.

...not that the plot matters all that much. This movie "understands the assignment," and it is two-fold. One, because the movie's main character is a stunt performer, the movie needs to have some incredible stunts. Two, because The Fall Guy aims to be a "four quadrant movie," the bickering romance between the two leads has to generate sparks. Everything else is incidental.

To the second point first, by casting Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt as the leads, the movie skillfully checks the box. Both actors have plenty of action movies under their belts, and both have played romances on film as well. Asking them to bring both to one movie is straightforward enough. Of course, Hollywood has given us countless rom-coms where two individually appealing actors have zero chemistry with each other... but fortunately, this is not one of them. This movie calls for the two to bicker with one another more than canoodle, but the relationship feels real all the same.

That's critical, because very little about the rest of the movie is meant to feel real. Ultimately, The Fall Guy is a patchwork quilt of wild stunts, but it works because each stunt works. You get car chases, fire gags, motorcycle gags, an extended sequence with a helicopter, fist fights, and everything in between.

It may be that The Fall Guy is just as much a "big dumb action movie" as other action movies I've accused of being too dumb. Maybe I just enjoyed the way that insider humor about movie-making is used as a glue to join all the disparate set pieces together. For whatever reason, I found it to be a fun, breezy watch that fully met its modest goals. (If millions of dollars of high-powered stunts can be called "modest.")

I give The Fall Guy a B+. I'll admit, it's a real cotton candy of a B+, that will evaporate from my brain and probably be completely forgotten at some point. But it's delicious while you're consuming it.