The Fall Guy hit theaters at the front end of the summer 2024 movie season and was met with a resounding thud. The opening week box office numbers were lower than expected. The second week numbers dipped even further as it was overtaken by another entry in the Planet of the Apes extended universe. A few weeks later, Twisters came out and swept away any remnants of buzz the film had left scattered behind it. The general consensus, at least from the perspective of the studios and trade publications, was that the movie was a flop. That’s a bummer, because The Fall Guy is a blast. But there is good news.
Luckily, now that the summer is ending and these narratives are tuckering themselves out, you have a second crack at experiencing this movie with fresh eyes. It debuted on Peacock in August, the same streaming platform you might have checked out to watch the Olympics. And if your subscription is still running over there, whether you signed up for a year to lock in a good deal or you’ve found other things worth watching — every episode of both Columbo and Homicide: Life on the Street are on Peacock, FYI — or you just forgot to cancel and have another month with an active account, please consider this: The Fall Guy is a perfect couch movie for an autumn Friday night.
This is admittedly not what everyone involved intended when they made this movie, which had the potential to be a big summer-defining hit. The pieces all appeared to be in place, too: Ryan Gosling fresh off of the Barbie mania, Emily Blunt doing Emily Blunt things, an identifiable piece of nostalgia to center the whole thing, etc. It had jokes and heart and a slew of fun whipass stunts — the film was directed by former Hollywood stuntman and John Wick co-director David Leitch, and doubles as a love song to the entire profession. It danced an extremely watchable line between rom-com and nostalgic action-comedy that I’m not sure the marketing of the film expressed before its release, which might be part of the problem.
I mean, it’s everything you could want out of a summer blockbuster. Consider:
– Ryan Gosling at his relentlessly charming best as Colt, a wisecracking stuntman who hits a rough stretch when things go sideways for him on a set and is reluctantly attempting to rebuild his life.
– Emily Blunt as a former camerawoman and first-time director named Jody who has a fraught romantic history with Colt and a justifiable ax to grind and a bunch of fun ways to grind it.
– Hannah Waddingham from Ted Lasso as a devious Hollywood operator who stabs people in the back while smiling at their faces.
– A dead body and a murder-related conspiracy that twists and unwinds and reveals itself as the film develops.
— A sweet love story that plays out like a cute romantic comedy between car chases and action sequences where things blow up.
— A karaoke scene with an absolute banger of a Phil Collins needledrop that had me somehow whooping and tearing up at the same time.
— A satisfying conclusion where the bad guys are thwarted and the good guys succeed (spoilers, I guess, but come on).
What else could you ask for from a movie to watch on a chilly weekend night when the sun goes down between 7 and 8 pm? It’s delightful.
Photo: Eric Laciste/Universal Pictures
Which, again, makes its missed projections a bummer. But that’s also what makes it such a perfect couch movie, too. I do not mean that dismissively. There is value in a couch movie, the kind of film you put on out of curiosity and end up getting sucked into and ordering a pizza to eat as you finish it. There are even some classics that fall into this category. A lot of them used to run on TBS or TNT on the weekends in the era before streaming. The Fugitive is a great couch movie. My Cousin Vinny might be the greatest couch movie ever made. More recently, The Accountant has become a couch classic, to the degree that there’s now a sequel being made almost a full decade after the first one was released, mostly because its post-theatrical run gave it a boost.
The Fall Guy has a similar appeal. It might take a different route to get to the same destination, but it is absolutely this kind of movie. My Cousin Vinny with explosions. I’m not sure I know how to give a film a higher compliment than this.
(I know this might feel like I’m giving you the hard sell here. I am, if I’m being honest. I think part of the problem is that I’m still upset about The Nice Guys, another underappreciated Ryan Gosling movie that whiffed at the box office. God, I love that movie. As does almost everyone I harangue into watching it. I don’t know why this keeps happening to me. And, uh, to Ryan Gosling, too. I think about it a lot — too much, some would say — and the best answers I have come up with are: One, people are consciously or unconsciously punishing Ryan Gosling for being funny and attractive and talented in a way that feels a little like a personal attack against those of us who would settle for one of those three; and two, Ryan Gosling movies with the word “guy” or “guys” in the title were cursed by a witch years ago and no one has figured out how to undo her black magic.)
The big takeaway here is that I truly believe you will enjoy The Fall Guy if you give it a shot some evening or weekend afternoon in the near future. It works as a feel-good action movie. It works as a date movie. It works just in general, regardless of what the numbers people tried to tell you about it back when it was released. You don’t have to care what those guys say anyway. You’re just looking for a good movie to watch from the comfort of your living room. And if you can do it by logging into a streaming service you’ve already paid for to watch the world’s greatest athletes compete against each other in hopes of winning a medallion made of precious metal, well, that’s just a little something we call value.
The Fall Guy is now streaming on Peacock.