2021 will likely go down as the year when movie watching changed forever, but the one thing that hasn’t changed is the fact that there are still plenty
Photo: Hopper Stone / Netflix
There’s always been something faintly hilarious about superheroes, both the naked fantasy of abruptly gaining special abilities and becoming superior to everyone else, and the idea of celebrating that specialness by putting on a colorful, skintight suit and running around punching people. But pure superhero comedy has always been comparatively rare. Making fun of power fantasies undercuts them, and makes them less thrilling. And even full-on superhero comedies still generally have to come around to some kind of thrill or emotional catharsis in the end which usually means looping back to a straightforward approach, and competing with the stories that are grapple with the exact same content without irony or amusement.
Photo: Netflix
Thunder Force?
There’s already an AC/DC song in the movie, and parent company Netflix has the resources to pay for it. Plus, it’s perfect for Melissa McCarthy’s character, whose apartment is decorated with beer paraphernalia and who treasures her vintage 1994 Slayer concert T-shirt more than her life. The practical answer, as always, is that it’s probably a rights issue. But it’s also just one of the many ways this fifth collaboration between McCarthy and writer-director Ben Falcone squanders what little personality it has.
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McCarthy’s Lydia is the only real character in the film, a pushy but good-hearted loudmouth who drives a forklift for a living and pounds Old Styles at Wrigleyville watering holes in her free time. (Everyone else is a sketch on a cocktail napkin.) A Chicago barfly who loves Van Halen and cries when they talk about the ’85 Bears is a distinct type, and giving superpowers to a dirtbag like Lydia essentially a female met
Mick LaSalle April 9, 2021
Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer in the comedy “Thunder Force.” Photo: Hopper Stone, Associated Press
The strengths and the weaknesses of “Thunder Force” are apparent from its first minutes: The strengths are Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer. The weaknesses are emotional phoniness and a tendency toward sentimentality.
Still, the new Netflix comedy, out Friday, April 9, has a decent share of laughs and a shrewd science fiction premise behind it.
Apparently, some cosmic event caused a superhero gene to be let loose on Earth, but and this is the interesting part it remained dormant in the vast majority of people. The gene expressed itself only within sociopaths, so as the movie begins, there are sociopathic “superheroes,” or “miscreants” as they’re called here, walking the Earth and doing terrible things with impunity.
Photo: RLJE Films
Roe Vs. Wade (select and virtual theaters 4/2), a.k.a. the anti-abortion movie so controversially odious that Kevin Sorbo dropped out of it, is finally here to preach to its choir. Those seeking some corporate schadenfreude should queue up the start-up meltdown documentary
WeWork: Or The Making And Breaking Of A $47 Million Unicorn (Hulu 4/2). Katherine Waterston is among the cast of
Amundsen (virtual theaters and VOD 4/2), a biodrama about the supposed first man to reach the South Pole. Casey Affleck plays a psychiatrist and family man facing the consequences of a patient’s suicide in the thriller