In the Hollywood rom-com, the decision to pair Barbie star Ryan Gosling with Oppenheimer’s Emily Blunt feels somewhat off-kilter. Hannah Waddingham, who plays a larger-than-life movie producer, is quite entertaining.

The Fall Guy: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt’s Combined Sarcasm Can’t Help

Director David Leitch is a stunt director himself. So, when he makes a film about a body double, you are within your rights to expect some heavily sardonic comment on screen heroism and the guys who take the rap from behind the scenes.

As a wry comment on the cult of body-doubling, The Fall Guy falls way below expectation. It is a slick slyly self-mocking trippy film with a terrific sense of humour in some parts. But for most parts it seems more a homage, less a satire on the culture of screen simulation whereby those who actually slog often get the raw end of the stick.

It must have given Ryan Gosling a huge kick to play Colt Seavers, who has fallen from grace, literally. After a nasty miscalculated fall during an action sequence, he retires from his job as a stunt double to a superstar Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). The fall shakes up Colt badly. He ends up as a parking attendant in a restaurant, which may seem a bit extreme in terms of a job downgrade.

The life of body doubles is never easy. But if you are looking for a film about hard jabs at the spirit of hardships then this is not the film for you. Come to think of it, this film is neither here nor there. It is neither a full-blown spoof on the ersatz culture of onscreen stunts, nor does it make a plea for those who suffer the brunt from behind scenes.

It just seems to be dazzled by the immediacy of the plot. The stunts that are staged in the film within the film, seem to be shot on the same scale as the real thing. The behind-the-scenes bustle is a bit of a bummer.

Having a superstar Ryan Gosling play the stuntman to a superstar is not ironic, it’s just plain miscasting. We can’t be feeling sorry for this guy. Gosling goes around with his tongue firmly in cheek reminding us that a superstar can be a sport if he wants to be. However, the sense of fun which the entire proceeding aims for, seems to elude it by a wide margin.

It’s hard to pinpoint what goes wrong in The Fall Guy. The Ryan Gosling-Emily Blunt pairing, for one, seems somewhat off-kilter. Which is fine, really, as they are meant to be a former couple at loggerheads. Blunt plays Jody Moreno, a cinematographer-turned-first time-director with a perpetual scowl on her face and a chip on her shoulder.

There is a particularly embarrassing moment in the script when Jody shouts out her barely veiled resentments to Colt over the megaphone while he tries to persuade her to say what she has to say in privacy. It is not only the junior artistes on the set of the film being shot who seem embarrassed. As the audience, the sequence’s inherent cheekiness never lands. This is true of most of the film which just doesn’t seem to get the desired effect of dazzling us with the stunts and beating them too.

The most entertaining character in the film is played by Hannah Waddingham as a larger-than-life movie producer. She is the only one who seems to get the point.