‘The Fall Guy’ review: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt pull off entertaining stunt

Movie review

The action comedy “The Fall Guy” sometimes has the feel of a big-studio movie made in some fantasy version of Hollywood, in which things get done right. Pairing up Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, two of the most charming performers in the stratosphere? Check. Paying tribute to stuntpeople, those daredevils who “get paid to do the cool stuff” (as this movie’s wry Gosling voice-over tells us) at risk of life and limb? Check. A screenplay that contains more than a couple of genuinely funny moments, including use of the oddly perfect term “sexy bacon”? Check. A “Notting Hill” reference, a dog who speaks French and the Sydney Opera House? Check, and please pass the popcorn immediately.

Directed by David Leitch, himself a former stunt performer (he was Brad Pitt’s double in “Fight Club”), “The Fall Guy” is essentially a love story with a lot of noise around it. (It’s loosely based on the 1980s TV series with Lee Majors.) Colt Seavers (Gosling) is a veteran Hollywood stuntman who, in the film’s early scenes, is happily in love with camera operator Jody Moreno (Blunt) — until a terrible accident halts his career and his relationship. Flash-forward a year, and a lonely Colt’s intrigued to get called back to work, on the Australian set of a film directed by Jody. Turns out, though, that he’s on hand not just for stunts, but to help solve a mystery: the disappearance of his look-alike leading man (Aaron Taylor-Johnson).

But the plot is not the point of “The Fall Guy” (a fact underlined, rather too obviously so, by a character on the movie set musing, “What if a character in the film acknowledges that we have a problem with the third act?”). The point is the way that Gosling, fresh off his Kenaissance, gazes at the camera — and at Jody — with his trademark sleepy charisma, like he’s both lovesick and faintly amused. It’s how Blunt’s Jody gets a little goofy around him, imitating his stuntman thumbs-up and instantly embarrassed by it. It’s how the supporting cast each gets a moment to shine (Taylor-Johnson’s hilarious cluelessness; Hannah Waddingham’s lovely variations on imperious panic), and how the whole thing just comes off as an affectionate tribute to movies and how they get made: the chaos, the serendipitous triumphs, the unsung heroes.

“The Fall Guy” isn’t a perfect movie; it’s longer and a bit more self-aware than it needs to be, and not every joke lands. But it has that rare quality in a big-studio film: a sense of fun. Stick around through the end credits; you’ll be rewarded in more ways than one.