6/12 ForReel Score | 3/5 Stars

Brad Bird’s Ray Gunn feels like watching the imaginary exploits of a little boy’s favorite action figure. A generically cool square jawed detective wisecracks his way through one set piece after another while flirting with a pretty girl. Indeed, this probably would’ve been a cornerstone of my preteen DVD rotation had I seen it in theaters sometime between The Incredibles and Ratatouille. It veers closer in quality to Tomorrowland than those two masterpieces. It’s a peppy, perfectly enjoyable tribute to a crock pot of other media but never truly finds a voice of its own. Bird has been conceiving this film since the late 80s but the end product feels like a dream project that a writer will talk about incessantly but never start. This is full of ideas for alien designs, wacky guns and elaborate sets. The story? Eh, Double Indemnity for kids.

We meet the titular private eye (Sam Rockwell) as he gets into a confrontation with an alien woman for forging illegal citizenship papers for other off world beings. Not terribly becoming for a guy I want to follow - but there’s no time to unpack that. Instead, Ray gets assigned to surveil volatile pop star Venus Nova (Scarlett Johansson) by her scummy husband Arnold (Bobby Cannavale). He wants to prove infidelity for an extra profitable divorce. Ray quickly gets wise to Venus being the true victim here, especially when her record label also asks him to keep tabs on her before a big album release. Thankfully, Venus likes Ray okay. The alter ego she disguises herself as to move through the world likes him even more.

While I recognize that this is a children’s film, it is a bit disappointing that Ray Gunn doesn’t have an entry level mystery worth chewing on. It reeks of Netflix and Skydance demanding a dumbed down story that kids can follow while playing on their phones. Thankfully, spending time with these characters isn’t painful. Rockwell and Johansson’s voice acting is quite charming and they manage to bring across some genuine chemistry. They are clearly excited to be in one of Bird’s films and approach the work as though they’ve scored a live action gig with a top tier director doing a noir piece. Ray doesn’t have much to him. He’s snarky, clever and flirtatious in a classic action hero way. Rockwell just pulls that off effortlessly. Johansson gets a lot more to do. Venus isn’t a plain femme fatale. Her white hot temper just barely disguises a woman desperate for human connection based on more than just her music and good looks. I do wish that the dynamic between them when Venus is in disguise was distinguishable at all. Ray displays awful critical thinking skills for an alleged detective. It takes him so long to clock that the woman who conveniently came into his life at this moment who talks and acts exactly the same as Venus but with different hair might in fact be her. Tom Waits also has some fun as Ray’s crotchety alien sidekick - even if their relationship doesn’t have that much depth.

Ray Gunn is loaded with action sequences. Many of them are brisk chases involving jetpacks, flying cars and guns with various quirky attributes. They have a similar madcap energy to the Elastigirl motorcycle sequence in Incredibles 2, even though nothing approaches the visual creativity of that. This barrage of set pieces does bloat the runtime to a hefty two hours, which is simply too long for such a bare bones story. There’s only so many times I can watch Ray and Venus foil the same handful of goons before I hope they eventually get their hands on a gun with bullets so that we can go home faster. Kids might not have the same issue - although I suspect that they will not be as excited overall about what the film is doing.

It is hard to distance Ray Gunn from the expectations I have for Brad Bird’s work. His previous films have rich emotional depth that dig into something more than genre pastiche. This project feels like a lark. Something he came up with during a less mature era of his life that never quite evolved. However, you can certainly do worse than watching a genre icon play with his toys. This is never less than entertaining but it is the first outright forgettable entry in Bird’s catalog of animated originals.

AFI Fest 2026 | Movie Review: "Ray Gunn" Is Concept Art Come To Life