Ready Player One

Like some classic video games, Ready Player One might not be all that challenging or complicated, but it still provides plenty of escapist fun.

This visually polished adaptation of the Ernest Cline science-fiction novel might not be one of director Steven Spielberg’s prestige projects, yet this exercise in spectacle over substance should at least please nerds and fanboys with its affectionate collection of cutting-edge gameplay, pop-culture references, and 1980s nostalgia.

The story opens in 2045 and follows Will (Tye Sheridan), a teenage outcast from Columbus, Ohio, whose introductory narration explains that he was born 18 years earlier, “after people stopped trying to fix problems and started trying to outlive them.”

So with socioeconomic despair having taken hold, everybody constantly wears masks and navigates an elaborate virtual-reality world called the Oasis, where avatars define identity and best friends may have never met in real life.

When eccentric Oasis founder Halliday (Mark Rylance) dies, he leaves behind a complex Willy Wonka-style game involving keys and clues, with a fortune and control of the Oasis in the balance. A corporate bigwig (Ben Mendelsohn) sees the revenue potential, and hires an army of experts to solve the puzzle. But Will — a.k.a. Parzival — and his tight-knit group of rebel avatars want to preserve Halliday’s vision and spirit by winning the prize themselves.

As usual with Spielberg, the film is technically remarkable, and isn’t just a special-effects bonanza. It’s immersed in an imaginative, dystopian futuristic landscape while exploring an intriguing if far-fetched hypothesis about what could happen if technology continues to consume almost every facet of our lives.

However, the screenplay by Cline and X-Men scribe Zak Penn relegates any potentially provocative probe of technological overreach to the back burner in favor of aggressive mayhem and a contrived underdog premise involving ragtag youngsters outsmarting adults.

Amid the frenetic thrills and uninspired dialogue, some of the convoluted intricacies of the game itself aren’t all that compelling. Furthermore, it threatens to undermine its message by making the VR sequences more emotionally satisfying than those taking place in the real world.

Still, it’s fitting that a film that salutes the insider notion of the “Easter egg” has so many amusing inside jokes of its own. With a craftsman at the joystick, Ready Player One features a playful sense of adventure likely to unite gamers past and present without sacrificing mainstream appeal.

Rated PG-13, 139 minutes.