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Steven Spielberg brings Ernest Cline’s book to the big screen. It’s about a dystopian future in which everyone is poor and living in squalor, so they spend most of their free time living in a big virtual game world called The Oasis. Now, I hate video games, so I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to get into this movie, but I had faith in Spielberg. And for the most part, Spielberg delivers the goods.

Ready Player One isn’t what I’d call a character-driven movie. The main character (Tye Sheridan) is trying to win a contest, a quest for three or four keys hidden throughout The Oasis. Whoever finds all the keys gets to become the new owner of the entire virtual world. To that extent, Ready Player One is much like a video game, with Sheridan’s character standing in for us, the player/viewer. This approach suffices. The supporting players are all one-note stereotypes, with the exception of The Oasis’ late creator, Halliday, played enigmatically by Mark Rylance. Rylance’s part and performance are one of the movie’s brightest points.

Despite the overall lack of personality, Ready Player One unfolds like a fun heist movie. Sheridan’s character and a motley group of other kids are all trying to one-up an evil corporation headed by Ben Mendelsohn, for acquisition of the keys and ownership of the virtual world. The pop culture references are fun throughout the movie, peaking in a lengthy, wonderful homage to one certain horror film. And Spielberg successfully brings the movie home in the third act almost by will of sheer craftsmanship.

Ready Player One isn’t a great movie, but it’s a fun movie. For all its homages and pop culture references, its engineered much like a movie from the 80s — shallow but colorful.