I so wanted to see Ryan Reynolds do Ben Kingsley here. C’mon, Ryan, are you an actor or not? Show us your chops; I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Ben Kingsley impression. I want blood. No such luck. I’m not sure Ryan Reynolds was even doing Ryan Reynolds here.
Self/less is one of those films that wants you to think about a life and the repercussions of selfishness and selflessness, but not too hard about them or you’ll miss a weak action film. Damian (Kingsley) is a rich old bastard. Discovering he has just months to live and can’t take it with him, he decides to check out a professional-looking-but-certainly-shady “body placement” service. Mark my words, this is a scam waiting to happen – all you need is a gullible-and-relatively-unattached rich person. “Um, sure, I’ve got a body just waiting for you … all I need is $25 M …” Who is to say that’s not you in a new body? How could anybody know for sure? Can’t answer a question? Something lost in translation; this isn’t rocket science, it’s mad science.
14-year-old institute director Albright (Matthew Goode) introduces Damien to his new body – Ryan Reynolds. Albright calls it an “empty vessel,” which is neither logical, nor possible; you guys were better off with The Clonus Horror plot line. And when Damien is inserted into Ryan Reynolds, he discovers that without the special Matrix pills, he has memories he shouldn’t be having. And then, despite quite literally investing his entire life in this project, Damien decides to indulge the memories instead of actively shutting them out.
Ryan Reynolds is too old for this role; you understand that, right? Ben Kingsley is currently 71; Reynolds is 38. Sure, that’s 33 years, which is nothing to sneeze at. It’s more than an entire generation, but, seriously? You can choose any “empty vessel” at the disposal of the company and you choose a guy at the tail 
end of his prime athletic life? You want to live forever? You’re going to be thinking about jumping bodies again in ten years. All else being equal, of course I’d rather be Ryan Reynolds aged 38. And while I think there will be nothing wrong with Ryan Reynolds, age 48, 58 or 68, I think my $25 M would be better invested in an 18 year-old, no? Somebody just old enough to be recognized as an adult and no older.
This leads to my next problem with the film which is at no time did new young Damien remind me of Old Damien. These films always work best when you can connect the two. The kid in Big looked like a young Tom Hanks. Steve Martin made an awesome Lily Tomlin. Nicolas Cage was so good at being John Travolta pretending he’s Nicolas Cage, I totally bought that bullshit premise. Or not. These films are silly. I’m sure this is prime masturbation material for the ancient prick moguls of the world; you can see Donald Trump asking his people to “get on that, right now!” But at the end of the day, we lack sympathy for the original Damien for cheating death and we know next to nothing about the original Reynolds, except that he is also, in a way, cheating death.
I’m not wild about cheats.
♪Body
Got a whole new body
Body
Sold my soul for body
Body
Sorta new my body
Body
Forty-two my body
Every man wants to have
A brand new body, man
In fact, I’m gonna invest
In this future plan
Rising in the morning
Kinda slow
Upgrading my muscles?
Go man, go
You can best believe that
He’s a Not-so-Man
Two heads in a body
Just because you can
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey
Not-so Not-so Man
Don’t wanna be a Not-so Man
Not-so Not-so Man
I’ll just die natural♫
Rated PG-13, 117 Minutes
D: Tarsem Singh
W: David Pastor, Àlex Pastor
Genre: Breaking in the new body
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: The kind of person who seriously considers cryogenic freezing
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Those who aren’t wild about playing God
♪ Parody inspired by “Macho Man”
