For a movie that preaches about the dangers of escapism and wasting your life playing video games, "Ready Player One" sure doesn't do a good job of painting a real world worth living in.

The year is 2045 and Earth has succumbed to overpopulation and global warming. Respite from all these present-day hardships is the Oasis, a massive virtual reality game where players can be anyone they want to be. We follow Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), an orphaned boy living in the slums who takes the lead in the race to solve the puzzles left behind by the game's late founder, James Halliday (Mark Rylance) --created to determine a worthy heir to his virtual kingdom.

Plugging in with Watts, we get to experience the Oasis, a wondrous, enticing world where it's possible to use the DeLorean to outrun a T-Rex, climb snowy mountains with Batman, or watch the Iron Giant go toe-to-toe with a robot Godzilla. It's a virtual delight that's worth the price of admission alone, and serves as a sharp contrast to the bleakness of our hero's real.

It's not new for a piece about virtual reality to present such dichotomy, although the unevenness of the two worlds in "Ready Player One" can leave one scratching their digital heads. In the Oasis, death equals decades of your life lost, time one is never going to get back. Outside of it, people are killed off without consequences. In the Oasis, players get to develop feelings, form lasting friendships. Outside, love is forced through exposition, stripping confessions of any weight.

If the point is to convince today's perpetually plugged-in generation to value offline human connections above all else, or criticize a stunted society excessively fixated on nostalgia, then it needs to treat the real with the same care and doe-eyed affection it afforded the Oasis.

Despite this major glitch, "Ready Player One," in the hands of director Steven Spielberg --a master of the boy adventure story-- remains an immersive spectacle, where the joy lies in seeing childhood favorites and forgotten pop culture relics pepper Watts' quest inside the vibrant digital world.

If you're looking for a movie that brings to the table fresh ideas or arguments for and against virtual reality, however, then you're maybe better off logging out from this one.

"Ready Player One," which was based on a best-selling novel by Ernest Cline, premieres in cinemas nationwide this Black Saturday. You can check out the trailer below:

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