After seeing Wolf Children, and The Boy and the Beast I went into this movie with high hopes, but I was severely disappointed. The premise for the movie sounded interesting, and I thought the setup for the events of the movie were well done. It was downhill from there.
The action in this movie was boring. There was no tension, despite the overreactions from all the mains. Its boring watching two video game characters fighting, knowing full well that the bloke sitting behind the keyboard wouldn't be affected in any way. The one potentially interesting fight, with actual real world consequences had no actual fighting, instead they decided to do some board game. On top of this they weren't very well choreographed, and very short. If you're looking for good fighting watch The Boy and the Beast.
The middle of the movie was not very interesting either, especially with the cheap way they extended the plot. I reckon it should have been at least half an hour shorter.
The "OZ" in the movie was pretty undefined as well, full of deus ex machinas and weird techno stuff that was there simply to drive the plot forward. Who connected a satellite to a goddam MMO? Why is all the infrastructure connected? Who connects a heart monitor to an MMO? Why did they not just turn off the damn thing, or restore it to an earlier point? Why does defeating some AI's avatar stop it? Surely it can just come back? Why does the game allow a single person to control more than one account, let alone 100 million? Why can you bet accounts? That sounds creepily close to slave trading.
These problems aside I liked the beginning and end of the movie. The parts were fun, and the grandma is badass.
