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Review of Free Guy (Christophe Beck)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if your appreciation for orchestral parody scores can extend to this smartly effortless but wholly anonymous music from Christophe Beck that is meant as a bland, unsung portion of the soundtrack.

Avoid it... on the song compilation album with some of Beck's score if you seek a well-rounded representation of the film's true musical personality.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Free Guy: (Christophe Beck) With elements of The Lego Movie, The Matrix, and a number of other reality-bending concepts behind its distinct universe, Free Guy is a remarkably unique look at life inside a video game. Shawn Levy's film postulates about what would happen if a non-player character in a video game like "Grand Theft Auto" gained sentience and started manipulating the game from within. Meanwhile, the code behind that game is the subject of a battle of intellectual rights between people in the real world, setting up a scenario in which characters in the game become self-aware just as their creators wage a battle to keep their code in existence. It's a rather convoluted idea that allows the real-life coders to interact with the sentient versions of their creations within the game, and everyone must come to peace with their existence by the end. The film, delayed like much of everything else for a year because of the pandemic, became one of 2021's more popular theatrical and streaming hits, flush with video game humor and a multitude of cameos to support its satirical comedy. The soundtrack is a bit of a conundrum, for the production logically applies a series of songs for the gaming sequences that one might expect to hear when playing it themselves. Mariah Carey's 1995 song, "Fantasy," is also referenced as a recurring identity. Because the studio obtained rights to borrow a number of pop culture references from famous franchises, movie themes from The Avengers and Star Wars also waft through in parody form. The original score becomes rather marginalized compared to the song placements, but it still plays an important role in the emotional side of the story. Levy had collaborated with many of the industry's top composers over the previous ten years, including Danny Elfman, Alan Silvestri, and Michael Giacchino, but for Free Guy he turned back to his trust comedy collaborator, Christophe Beck. While the length of his output is rather minimal for this project, Beck was tasked with conjuring the music meant to accompany the relationships, mystery, and action from the perspective of the main characters, both digital and real, while the songs are placed for the benefit of the audience and gamers in context. Since self-discovery is a vital aspect of these main characters, Beck takes it upon himself to score mostly this portion of the plot, though he does get some blazing game action cues to himself as well.

The demeanor of Beck's music for Free Guy is airy, comedic, and unsubstantial on one hand but surprisingly beefy in the action and fantasy modes on the other. The resulting whole is well crafted but not entirely memorable, striking a generic tone for each emotional appeal. The personality owes much to Mark Mothersbaugh's music for The Lego Movie, though you can hear Beck attempting to emulate rambling synthetic propulsion from Patrick Doyle's The Emoji Movie and approaching but never reaching the dissonant challenges of Don Davis' The Matrix. The ensemble consists of a full orchestra, generic choral tones, electronic accents, and modern rock elements, Beck applying them tonally for almost his entire runtime. His use of rhythmic devices is notable, for most of the cues relating to characters or action within the game are accompanied by repetitive structures or rambling synthetic rhythms to denote the formulaic ways in which that universe works. The themes are all kept anonymous as well, using simplistic phrasing and rarely realizing truly outbreak performances that would keep them in mind. In essence, Beck's job here was to provide a wallpaper of appropriate background music rather than define characters that don't necessarily deserve it. One could argue that's a rather cheap way to handle both a sentient artificial intelligence and the real-life characters, but it allows Beck to do his job without competing with the song placements. Interestingly, the themes also frequently exist in two-note phrasing, almost as if to recognize the binary aspect of programming and life versus death. Foremost among the themes is a chipper, harmless idea for Guy himself, the lead game character who causes all the fuss. His carefree existence is espoused by this optimistic string theme at the start and end of the film, debuting at 0:24 into "Have a Great Day" and wrapping at 0:37 into "Life Itself." A redemptive, ascending interlude sequence at 0:24 into the first cue becomes a recurring source of hope. The theme turns progressively more mysterious by 0:17 into "A New Day" and shifts into James Bond mode at the start and end of "Two Glocks," the score's upmost moment of brazen coolness. It opens "This Ends Now" on solo horn, shifting to sensitive woodwinds, and the interlude sequence informs a later, optimistic, James Horner-like passage. That interlude returns at 0:56 into "It's Go Time." This theme is displaced during the midsection of the score by a handful of other motifs that Beck emphasizes as Guy's existence becomes more complicated.

Beck's discovery theme in Free Guy is built upon descending pairs of notes over repeating synth figures in rhythm. It's foreshadowed by light choir at 1:06 into "Sunglasses" before asserting itself for the full ensemble at 1:41. A variant using the same chords follows at 0:28 into "Stash House Fail," and most listeners may recall it best from its mystical, revelatory moments starting at 0:17 into "It's All a Lie." It strives for the finale of The Matrix at 1:39 into "Rebooted" and turns defiant in awing action mode at 0:16 into "On Strike." It exits at 0:56 into "This Ends Now," the theme's progressions shifted towards an ascent. More prevalent a theme in Free Guy is a mystery motif likely representing the real-life aspects of the story and how they affect the game's universe. This four-note motif debuts in suspense at 0:33 into "A New Day" and builds a greater but still subtle presence at 0:27 into "Stash House Fail." It's faint at the start of "Two Glocks" but reforms with menace at 0:51 into that cue. Light keyboarding offers suspense for the theme at 1:23 into "Guy's Guise," and a glimmer of hope starts to show in the idea's manipulated progressions at 0:34 into "Rebooted." The idea reassumes its subtle stance at 0:24 into "I Remember Everything" and 0:31 into "Getting Hectic," moving to slight string relief at 0:09 into "Reunited" before turning big and redemptive for full the ensemble at 1:22. A love theme carries over from Beck's music for the 2012 animated short film, Paperman, by Levy's request. Here, the composer really fails to make the most of the identity's potential, the plot's main relational twist not matched well in the score. The idea is pretty for piano and strings at the start of "Ice Cream" and is reprised with a bit more of a hip personality on strings and synth keyboarding at 1:17 into "I Remember Everything." But Beck underplays the idea in "Reunited," the cue developing the theme throughout but never allowing it to flourish with any necessary depth; the composer instead returns it to the domain of the piano at 1:34. The final identity in Free Guy is a series of ascending figures that serves as an action and fantasy motif for heroics in the game that are not serviced by songs. Its straight fantasy mode can be heard at 1:50 into "About to Get Shot" and is reprised late in both "It's Go Time" and "Hitman's Beach" before blending in with the action in the latter half of "Getting Hectic" and middle of "Tables Turn." Together, these themes are not particularly memorable, leaving Beck's competent execution of the parody sound as the music's main identity. The 42-minute score on album is smartly effortless but wholly anonymous, just like Guy, and casual listeners might be better served by the film's song compilation album containing four assembled tracks from Beck's score.  ***

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 44:22

• 1. Have a Great Day (2:39) • 2. Cappuccino (1:29) • 3. Sunglasses (2:31) • 4. About to Get Shot (2:53) • 5. A New Day (1:16) • 6. Stash House Fail (1:16) • 7. Two Glocks (2:14) • 8. Ice Cream (2:31) • 9. Guy's Guise (2:11) • 10. It's All a Lie (2:20) • 11. Rebooted (2:02)

• 12. I Remember Everything (2:02) • 13. On Strike (1:23) • 14. This Ends Now (2:29) • 15. It's Go Time (1:26) • 16. Hitman's Beach (2:30) • 17. Getting Hectic (1:48) • 18. Dude (1:32) • 19. Tables Turn (1:07) • 20. Reunited (3:24) • 21. Life Itself (1:43)

NOTES & QUOTES:

There exists no official packaging for this album.

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