Tarzan's Jungle Rebellion (1967)

Spoilers ahead for Free Guy

Free Guy, Disney’s new movie about a video game NPC who realizes he’s living in a video game, is a treat! Its base is classic Disney — a white heteronormative love story. But its toppings — Ryan Reynolds’ unique brand of adult humor, a commitment to exploring modern day video game culture, and tons of star cameos — make this movie fun to watch! 

Free Guy’s main protagonists are all white, heteronormative characters, per usual. This story could have had so much potential for great representation if even one of the leads had been non-white. Yet again, POC are relegated to supporting roles. Guy’s best friend is Buddy (Lil Rey Howery), a fearful security guard. Howery is hilarious here, playing a very similar character to his role in Get Out. While he is great as comic relief, he also has one of the most touching moments in the movie when he gives a speech to Guy about how, even if they are fake, the moments they share together are real. Buddy should have been given more to do than serve as Guy’s motivator and fall into the black best friend trope. 

Mouser (Utkarsh Ambudkar) is another comedic character and the friend to Keys (Joe Keery). Guy and Buddy and Keys and Mouser are meant to be parallels of each other since Keys himself created Guy, so that means we get two sets of white male protagonists and their POC best friends! However, Mouser seems much less like a best friend than Buddy. But Ambudkar does amazing in this role, and it was great to see him so soon after finishing season 2 of Never Have I Ever where he played the cool teacher. He also should have been given more to do than act as Antoine’s lackey and Keys’ friend. We don’t even see too much of him being Keys’ friend anyway, making his line “Keys is my boy,” feel a bit cheap, but the movie unfortunately isn’t interested in giving him much depth beyond that.