(courtesy IMP Awards)
It’s time to be brutally honest – most cinematic adaptations of TV shows are not very good.
In fact, in many cases, they are beastially awful – we’re looking at you Bewitched and CHiPs; we’d rather we weren’t but alas for a moment we must – and you walk away wondering how clearly talented people could look at a TV series that is universally well-loved and not manage to distill it down to a tight movie running time.
Thankfully, when you watch The Fall Guy, based on Glen A Larson’s series of the same name which ran from 1981 to 1986, you will not be wincing in pain at the damage done to a nostalgia-laden viewing memory.
So, walk into the cinema confident, at the very least, that all those happy hours spend watching a show, ahem, some four decades or so earlier, won’t be trashed and trampled like concertgoers walking all over garbage as they leave an outdoor concert.
Nostalgia is safe; but better than that, it actually gets nicely buffed, shined and polished, with director David Leitch beautifully employing sparkling wit, needle drops (can “Against All Odds” by Phil Collins actually authentically move you? Yes, yes it can), vivacious characterisation and some mesmerisingly good performances that tread a perfect line between drama and hilarity to compulsively viewable effect.
The Fall Guy, which even manages to adroitly pay home to its source show without looking clunky and awkward, is an exemplary blockbuster that is simultaneously batsh*t crazy and ridiculously over-the-top and as heartfelt as hell with a romantic comedy element woven into it so well that love and action somehow sit comfortably cheek by much bashed out jowl.
If that sounds like a minor, or really when you consider the train wreckage spun out by many a TV show to movie adaptation, a major miracle, that much of the thanks has to go to the script by Drew Pearce that evokes the old show without making the movie a slave to rose-coloured remembrance.
All of which means that you can get all nostalgic and warm-and-fuzzy inside and still feel like you’re seeing something new, fresh, exceptionally fun and interesting.
The Fall Guy centres on Colt Seavers (played in the film by Ryan Gosling and in the TV series by Lee Majors ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- who makes a cameo appearance in a mid-credits epilogue scene) a stunt person who, at the film opens is right at the top of his game.
Almost literally in fact with the love of camera person Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt) with whom he enjoys a fun, loving and affectionately sparring relationship, and a career that sees him performing a range of stunts including one that almost kills and sidelines him after a 12-story fall on harnesses goes horribly wrong.
Crushed emotionally – he and Jody break up after he collapses into himself and won’t see her or anyone from his old life – and pretty much physically by the accident, Colt leaves the industry but rejoins when long-time producer friend Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham in fabulous form in a role that she was born to play) calls and says Jody, now a first-time director on a schlocky big-budget sci-fi epic, needs him on his debut directorial outing.
Colt, who’s always regretted that he spurned the love of his life just when he needed her the most, heads to Sydney only to find that maybe things aren’t quite as telegraphed and that the star of the film, Tom Ryder (Aaron Tyler-Johnson) is missing, imperilling the film, the failure of which could torpedo Jody’s nascent career as a director (something that Colt, who still loves Jody passionately and selflessly, can’t allow to happen).
Coopted by Gail to track down Tom, Coly quickly discovers that things aren’t even remotely what they seem and that his first-time descent into investigative sleuthing might well be his last.
To say anything more, would be rupture a whole tank full of spoilery nasties but suffice to say, it’s at this point that The Fall Guy, which has already demonstrated how clever, funny and heartfelt it can be, really comes into its own, offering up action, spectacle and some finely-realised comedic moments that rise gloriously on beautifully-wrought dialogue that is flawlessly delivered with exquisitely funny timing.
The Fall Guy is one of those blockbusters that very happily remembers that it’s not enough simply to be big, loud and funny.
There has to be something beneath the hood too and the film wastes no time employing that to brilliant effect with the key relationship underpinning the action-punctuated narrative, between Colt and Jody, allowed all the time in the world to breathe and live and be established as the key driver of much, though not all, the giddily hilarious and intensely fun narrative.
By taking the time to make Colt and Jody matter, all the other relational pieces fall into place, empowering The Fall Guy with the kind of emotional muscularity you might not have expected in a million pyrotechnic-bedazzled years that it would possess.
The film is that rare beast that is able to take you on the mother of all silly, escapist rides through a thousand unlikely narrative moments, many of them laced with a ridiculousness that entertains to a deliciously, manically diversionary degree, while acting having it all mean something.
And, as noted, while making all that carefully stored away nostalgia you have for the source show not feel like someone has thrown it in a dumpster and set it all on fire. (If you are far to young to remember the TV series, fear not because the film works triumphantly well as it’s own standalone epic.)
A love letter to stunt people that has a ton of fun paying homage to them in the credits – do not rush from your seats when it says “The End”, just don’t – The Fall Guy is an absolute hoot that entertains on a suitably massive and escapist scale, that deftly balances humour and action, and yes, even some intrigue to craft a movie that is all nostalgia and not all at once, and which proves you can be as silly as hell and still strike a chord in the hearts of audiences everywhere.