The Fall Guy’s director, David Leitch, is a former stuntman. Leitch knows how to stage a good stunt. But his ability to shape a two-hour narrative is less sure. He has a weird sense of pace. He skips over important plot points in two seconds but lets scenes of purported comedy drag on at tiresome length.

He also struggles to control the movie’s tone. Ideally, a film like this should hero the action and deploy the laughs judiciously, as a kind of seasoning. The Fall Guy tries to hero the comedy. Its approach is insistently slapsticky and broad, as if big laughs, like a big stunt, can be achieved through simple physical application.

Maybe the studio figured if you’ve got Ryan Gosling, you don’t need a first-rate writer or director. After all, Gosling is one of the most roguishly charming movie stars of our time. He can take a half-decent line and make it sound like gold.

For the opening 10 minutes or so, Gosling’s charm is sufficient to carry The Fall Guy. You’re reminded of how good he was in The Nice Guys. Then you find yourself recalling that The Nice Guys was written and directed by the genuinely witty Shane Black. In a Black film, the good lines keep coming. In The Fall Guy, they don’t.

Nor does Emily Blunt’s Jody bring much to the alleged party. Blunt’s role is overwritten and underwritten. She’s given plenty of lines, but few of them transmit any clear sense of who her character is meant to be. She gets plenty of scenes with Gosling, as if some kind of chemistry will inevitably arise as a result.

It never does. Blunt and Gosling are a dud pairing. The only sparks that fly come from smashed-up automobile parts scraping against roads.

A critic quoted on the poster says this is “a ridiculously fun movie”. I heartily endorse the suggestion that The Fall Guy is ridiculous. But fun? Not from where I was sitting.

The Fall Guy is released in cinemas on April 24.

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