A tongue-in-cheek look at movie making with a slant toward stunt work framed as a romantic comedy adventure… sort of.

Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) is a stuntman doubling for self-absorbed movie star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) who takes all the credit he can get away with. Colt doesn’t mind too much since camerawoman Jodie Moreno (Emily Blunt) is usually there to flirt with, but all his dreams of success grind to a halt when an accident puts him out of commission and makes him question his career. Jodie gets her big break as a director over a year later, a fact Colt doesn’t learn until Ryder’s agent Gail (Hannah Waddingham) phones him out of the blue with a job offer, luring Colt out of his self-imposed exile because “Jodie needs him.” Unfortunately, Gail’s true dilemma is the disappearance of the film’s lead actor — Tom Ryder again, of course — and needs Colt to get him back before the studio shuts down Jodie’s movie and her future career.

Originally a television series starring Lee Majors, Douglas Barr, Markie Post, and Heather Thomas, “The Fall Guy” ran on ABC Network from 1981 to 1986 about Hollywood stunt people moonlighting as bounty hunters, including Majors himself singing the theme song “The Unknown Stuntman.” Four decades later, former stuntman-turned-director David Leitch was tasked to bring the idea to the big screen for Universal, having worked on John Wick, Nobody, Violent Night, and directed Atomic Blonde… so he knows a little about this stuff (also having doubled for Brad Pitt). The trailers suggest a ridiculous but amusing mix of situation comedy, chase sequences, and over-the-top stunts with “making a big action movie” as an excuse. Banking on the star power of the leads and some questionable nostalgia, it feels like Gosling and Blunt have been teasing their post-Barbenheimer team-up forever, but will that translate into a surprise hit for a year running short on box office smashes?

This theatrical reboot is squarely aimed at Gosling’s fanbase, playing a character wrestling with mortality while puffing up like an invulnerable warrior for his best gal. A lot of the humor plays into “will he / won’t he / of course he will” build-ups along with a few surprise don’t-think-just-do-it moments that keep the fun moving along. Fans of Emily Blunt and her work in films like Edge of Tomorrow may wonder why she’s “merely the love interest” in a film featuring physically fit athletic stunt people, but the production makes no secret about it being “The Gosling Show.” In the same way twentieth-century superhero movies seemed incapable of taking themselves seriously, The Fall Guy can’t help winking at the audience at every opportunity, especially under the guise of making a big-budget sci-fi epic that looks eyerollingly cheesy.

The best parts are where the film borrows from the original series, glossing over real-world details to get to the money shots. Need a stunt done? No problem for professional stunt people; just get in there and don’t die — you’ll be fine. Wreck a borrowed pickup truck in the middle of town but need to be somewhere else? No problem; feel free to flee the scene of the accident — no issues there. Unfortunately, this isn’t a prime time TV show back in the eighties, and it’s weird overlooking so much destruction (and nothing happening as a result of any of it) simply because that’s not our story. Working in more of the prep work, rehearsals, and skillsets going into big stunts as integral to the film would have been amazing (the credits finally provides viewers a glimpse of the actual behind-the-scenes insanity), but shrugging it off as sight-gag fodder makes one wonder if there wasn’t more stunt-team oriented elements edited out of the script by the studio.

A couple of Easter eggs are there for fans of the original, with a special not to their derivative wannabe blockbuster Metalstorm — extra points if you thought “The Destruction of Jared-Syn” after reading that. While Gosling and Blunt fawning over one another isn’t hard to watch, Taylor-Johnson’s self-absorbed egotist steals plenty of scenes out from under them; forgiving the constant self-awareness will carry viewers through to the credits on charm alone. For those who prefer live stunt work with less contrived romance, seek out the 1978 film Hooper starring Burt Reynolds directed by stuntman / stunt coordinator Hal Needham — and feel free to thank me later.

The Fall Guy is rated PG-13 for action and violence, drug content, some strong language, and trippy unicorns.

Three skull recommendation out of four