I sometimes enjoy the filmography of director David Leitch. However, he’s becoming more hit or miss for me in recent years. I found his 2022 film Bullet Train exhausting and not nearly as charming and funny as it thought it was. Having gotten his start in the first John Wick film, Leitch has been attached to numerous action projects since, to varying degrees of success and quality. I have seen the trailer for The Fall Guy about a million times – it has played before almost everything for the past two months. So I kind of went into the showing this afternoon in a bad mood, expecting to be annoyed by the whole thing.

Well, The Fall Guy is the quintessential summer movie. It’s big, loud, dumb, and makes less sense the more you think about it. It has a big, cacophonous third act finale with that action movie thing where you kind of forget where everyone is in relation to everyone else and there are so many explosions. The script starts out sharp and dulls its focus as it goes on. And yet…there is something about the power of movie stars. Because The Fall Guy is kind of a delight. And that is all thanks to its well-matched stars Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt.

Months after a near-fatal injury that has kept him off the grid for some time, veteran stuntman Colt Seavers (Gosling) receives a call summoning him to a film shoot in Australia where his ex-girlfriend, longtime camerawoman Jody Moreno (Blunt) will be directing her debut feature film. A mystery involving the disappearance of the actor Colt is standing in for (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) unravels, putting Colt in the crosshairs of some very dangerous people. Will he outsmart everyone and solve the mystery and have his big Hollywood ending with the woman he loves?

Before The Fall Guy starts, we have a cutesy message from Gosling and Leitch, telling us to turn off our cell phones. In this message, they talk about how this film is a love letter to stunt work. And it is that, however it’s more of a throwback to the kind of summer movie that used to get made all the time and is more rare these days. The Fall Guy is also a tribute to the action movie rom com. The kind where we have two impossibly attractive people with great chemistry, and lots of banter and increasingly impossible situations. There’s a split screen sequence here that called to mind lots of my favorite old rom-coms. The most recent comp for this kind of movie would be the Sandra Bullock/Channing Tatum vehicle The Lost City, which was also a big dumb delight.

Ryan Gosling is riding high after his Oscar-nominated and much loved turn in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, and this performance feels very much like an extension of that. He’s quippy, charming, endlessly appealing and his performance never feels like too much. He has an easy, watchable chemistry with Emily Blunt, who seems to be having just as much fun here as Gosling. The two of them are just so good together, it’s easy to forgive The Fall Guy for a lot of its rougher edges.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson is very well used here in douchey villain mode. Maybe Hollywood is finally figuring out what to do with him. A relief, since I’ve always been a fan but it’s taken long enough for him to find where he belongs in big movies like this. We also have a very funny Hannah Waddingham as the movie producer who’s constantly trying to have control over the situation. Winston Duke and Stephanie Hsu are also fun to watch in smaller roles. And of course there’s the adorable dog that assaults bad guys on command.

Gosling and Blunt did a bit during the Academy Awards a few months ago where it looked like a best stunt team category was finally going to be announced, after years of various groups clamoring for one. That bit turned out to just be promo for The Fall Guy, and there’s a moment in this film that addresses via clunky dialogue, how ridiculous it is that there is no stunt category at the Oscars. And this film itself is a good argument for the existence of that category. I was hoping for something in the end credits – maybe the names of the many stunt performers appearing in larger font – that would call out the hard work of the stunt performers in a more substantial way. But that doesn’t happen, and it felt like a missed opportunity. We have clips from other movies in the opening of this film that show off some legendary stunt work – but then it also feels like Leitch patting himself on the back by including a clip from Atomic Blonde.

Overall, I had a very fun time with The Fall Guy. It’s an old-fashioned shut-your-brain-off, get-the-big-popcorn-and-soda and just enjoy the ride summer movie. It’s elevated to a level it perhaps doesn’t even earn, and that is fully because of the two movie stars at the center. There’s lots of long take, thrilling action sequences, but the movie is always the most fun when it’s just a scene between Gosling and Blunt. It’s also about 20 minutes too long and comes violently close to overstaying its welcome. The meta self-awareness of it all, the pop culture references and the needle drops (sometimes perfect, sometimes a bit too on the nose) can feel exhausting if you’re not buying what this movie’s selling. But I found it to be a relatively easy sell. Just don’t think about it too hard.