WARNING: SPOILERS

Is the movie an argument against women directors? Even though it was directed by a guy? 

I know, it’s just a comedy, shut up. But I kept thinking of that “Godfather” line: “It’s not personal, it’s strictly business.” While directing her first film, Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt) does the opposite. She makes it very, very personal.

Eighteen months earlier, we’d gotten intimations of a romance between Jody, then a movie editor, and cocky stunt man Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling), who suddenly breaks his back during a stunt and winds up quitting the business and parking cars for a living. (Cf., Wade Wilson getting rejected by the Avengers and becoming a car salesman in “Deadpool & Wolverine.” If your exciting dream job falls through, 2024 movies are telling us, the only fallback is car-related customer service. Beware, beware.) 

Ah, but then Colt gets word from producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham of “Ted Lasso”) that they need him on the set of the new big sci-fi action flick, “Metalstorm,” being filmed in Australia. More, Jody needs him, because she’s directing her first film. She’s asked for him. So off he goes. And for his first stunt, shortly after he arrives, he rolls a car eight and a half times—a new world record!

Except it turns out Jody didn’t ask for him. In fact, she’s not happy to see him at all. During his convalescence, we later learn, she tried to nurse him but he disappeared on her. Basically he disappeared. She didn’t see it as a man losing his raison d’etre and thus sinking into depression; she thought it was all about her. And she took it very, very personal.

So for the next stunt, while telling him the backstory of the romance within “Metalstorm”—which, in key details mirrors their own—she has him do a stunt where he’s lit on fire and, post explosion, slammed against a giant boulder. And then she has him do it again. And again. And again. She’s like a cat toying with a trapped mouse. She uses precious time and studio resources to wage a personal vendetta against a man who—let’s not forget—was attempting to return from a broken back! For her!

What a fucking dick. 

Anyway, that’s why women shouldn’t direct movies.

Fall from a tall building
“Fall Guy” is flip and flippant. Cars flip, people are flippant. It’s movie insider-y and popculture-y. Since it’s based on an ’80s TV series, we get references from that awful decade (from hair-metal music to “Miami Vice” homages), as well as post-credit cameos from the TV series’ stars Lee Majors (looking great at 85) and Heather Graham. We also get a snippet of bionic sound-effects from Majors’ previous series, “The Six Million Dollar Man.” I liked that bit even if it was nonsensical. But you get the idea: the movie doesn’t take itself too seriously. It doesn’t take anything seriously except stunts.

The movie also gives us a double meaning for the title, since Colt is being set up to take the blame for a crime. If you unpack the plot, though, it makes zero sense. But who would do that? That’s not nice. Let people have their fun.

Yeah, here I go.

While partying in Australia during the filming of “Metalstorm,” movie star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson)—who, it turns out, sabotaged Colt’s stunt 18 months earlier out of jealousy or something—is taunted by his stunt double Henry Herrera (Justin Easton, Gosling’s own stunt double) about not doing his own stunts, and they get into a drunken fight that Ryder wins. Yayyy! Except he’s kicked Henry into an end table and killed him. Ooops! Plus it’s all been filmed on his phone. He’s guilty of murder. What’s a poor movie star to do?

This one calls producer Gail Meyer, forever sucking on the straw of something Starbucks-y while literally chained to her cellphone. And she, or they, decide to pin the blame on someone else. They’re going to use AI to deepfake the phone video so it appears someone else did the kicking. Sure, why not? More, they’re going to do this not with someone at the party—and there were, what, about 20 people there?—but with someone who wasn’t even in the country. They’re going to make Colt Seavers the fall guy. 

Why not a stuntman who’s in country? Cuz that’s not the story. As is, Gail has to call Colt, get him to give up his life, buy a ticket, and fly to Sydney—a 15-hour nonstop flight—and then be driven to the movie set, where tests are done, including the CGI stuff so they can duplicate his face. Then he begins to work. He does the rollover record and the numerous lit-on-fire takes. He doesn’t discover the body of Henry on ice in a bathtub until that evening. So that’s what, 24 hours? At best? And is a corpse on ice really going to fool forensics about time of death?

Plus, whey are they assuming everyone in the room will keep quiet? If it were me in that room, seeing what I saw, and then reading that Colt Seavers was arrested for the crime, I’d mull it over for all of five seconds before heading to the police. Or the press. Or both. Moral reasons, sure, but also self-preservation. I’d know I was a loose end. Sooner or later, I’d feel, they’d come for me, too. All to save the career of a worthless movie star making a worthless movie in the Australian desert.

Roll a brand-new car
So is Tom Ryder supposed to be Tom Cruise? After he kicks Henry, but before he realizes he’s killed him, he shouts at the camera, “Do I do my own stunts? I think I do!” That’s very Cruise. Elsewhere, they use Cruise’s name twice, maybe to suggest, “No, see, not him, he’s over here,” and thus avoid litigation, but I’m not convinced. Is Cruise known for having riders in his contracts? Maybe about doing his own stunts?

The director was a smart choice anyway. Before he began helming such actioners as “Atomic Blonde,” “Deadpool 2” and “Bullet Train,” David Leitch was a longtime stunt man. Looks like he never doubled Cruise, but he was the longtime stuntman for Brad Pitt.

Overall, Gosling’s great, Gosling and Blunt have good chemistry (even if her character is a dick), and I liked “Black Panther”’s Winston Duke as stunt coordinator Dan Tucker. Teresa Palmer’s in this? I guess she played the chick with the sword who attacked Colt? Here’s a wake-up call: I think of Palmer as one of the newbies, someone the kids dig. Turns out she’s nearly 40. 

Aaron Taylor-Johnson is another good choice. He feels like a movie-within-a-movie star rather than the real deal. Out in the wild, he doesn’t survive. Waddingham’s Gail Meyer is the movie’s true villain but you wonder over her motivation. Is Ryder important enough to orchestrate all this? To implicate yourself? To ruin your life?

The theme song, once sung by Lee Majors, has been given an update by Blake Shelton. References to Farrah, Bo, Cheryl Tiegs, Robert Redford and Clint Eastwood have understandably been removed—even though, wow, 45 years later, Redford and Eastwood are still making movies. No new movie stars’ names have been added. Not even Tom Cruise.