Opening Argument: What's The Deal With Ryan Reynolds?
When I was a young(-er) entertainment writer, I found Ryan Reynolds' repeated efforts to succeed in straightforward romantic comedies kind of baffling. He could certainly be cute enough in things like The Proposal, but I was never persuaded that he was the answer to anybody's acute need for a great romcom lead. His tidiness was unnerving. He was at his best in roles like Adventureland (a movie I strongly recommend you seek out if you never have), where he plays a real smug jerk. Like Hugh Grant, he seemed like somebody who should be pushing against that tidiness rather than embracing it.
But, for a variety of reasons, he didn't go quite the Hugh Grant path. He went the wisecracking-Deadpool path. And in Red Notice -- which I was the only person on our panel to like! -- he's achieved some kind of over-the-top smug quippiness that has come all the way back around for me, to the point where I found it charming. And I don't know why!
There's such a seamlessness to the current iteration of Reynolds that it's downright unsettling. I feel like if you analyzed his body chemistry, you'd find that he's made of one compound, 100 percent RyanReynoldsoxide, just kinda through and through. He shows up in stuff like Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw and he's just ... himself! Exactly himself, the same as always. I feel like you could drop him into Hamlet or The Sound Of Music or Batman and you'd get the same thing: him, as himself, the same way every time. And he'd be better at it than maybe you anticipated.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, nor does it mean he's not talented. Range is not the only measure of skill. Perhaps the right question about Red Notice is less "Could Ryan Reynolds do stuff besides this kind of smarmy bit?" and more "Could anybody sell this smarmy bit besides Ryan Reynolds?" In a way, he and Dwayne Johnson have that in common. Johnson, too, plays roles in a particular way, pretty much every time, with pretty much the same set of flourishes. In fact, the dynamic between these two guys in Red Notice is pretty much exactly what you would expect from any movie that starred these two guys. (That's part of why the ending doesn't work, but explaining that would be kind of spoilery.) It's very much "a Ryan Reynolds type meets a Dwayne Johnson type," with a little bit of room for Gal Gadot.
The reviews of the movie have been so negative that I feel like I've gone through some kind of critical inversion: How did I wind up the person sticking up for Ryan Reynolds being a slick, pretty brat in a movie? Maybe it's because I have such a weakness for funny little flashes of personality like his "Grace Kelly" video with Will Ferrell. Maybe it's because I appreciate a guy who finds what he's good at. And maybe he will show up in Hamlet or The Sound Of Music and surprise me -- I would enjoy that. I would be happy for him.
I'm fascinated by what aging will mean for him, too. Hugh Grant has started playing a lot of genuinely unpleasant aging dudes; is that where Reynolds will go, too? He's got jerk chops (see, again: Adventureland), but it's been a while since he's seemed interested in that. For now, he seems content to be purely and freely himself, the Ryan Reynolds-iest movie star he can be.
I've been recommending some of my favorite TikTok accounts as I've gradually eased into becoming a TikTok person, and I've very much been enjoying Andy Miller, a dietitian who really doesn't like traditional diet culture.
NPR's Andrew Limbong did a great story this week about how -- in the case of an on-set catastrophe like the shooting on the set of Rust -- safety issues are indistinguishable from labor issues. I think Astroworld, in fact, raises a lot of the same questions regarding what kind of "security" and crowd control help people choose to pay for. It's all worth considering, particularly in the context of recent labor matters in the entertainment industry, like the IATSE negotiations.
Aisha chatted about Netflix's The Harder They Fall with our pals Ayesha Rascoe and Audie Cornish.
And Aisha talked toCode Switch's Karen Grigsby Bates and Brittany Luse about the new film Passing.
We were delighted to revisit the conversation Stephen, Glen and I had with our friend Kat Chow about Project Runway.
And I had so very much fun with regular panelists Chris Klimek, Margaret H. Willison and Ronald Young, Jr. talking about Red Notice, a Ryan-Reynolds-meets-The-Rock movie that I was alone in finding very charming.
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