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★★
Directed by: #BenFalcone
Written by: #BenFalcone
Starring: #MelissaMcCarthy, #OctaviaSpencer, #JasonBateman, #BobbyCannavale
In a world where supervillains (known as ‘Miscreants’) are commonplace, two estranged childhood best friends reunite after one devises a treatment that gives them powers to protect their city.
Thunder Force (2021) is the newly released superhero action comedy which was recently dropped on Netflix and is directed and written by Ben Falcone, award winning director for his work on Tammy (2014). Both films star his wife Melissa McCarthy in the lead roles, who has been nominated for Best Fantasy Actress in this movie. Although the film has also been nominated for Best Fantasy Movie at the Scream Awards, it has currently been receiving largely negative reviews from audiences and critics alike, with only a dismal twenty four percent on the Rotten Tomatoes score system. The question is: is this film really unwatchable and a waste of an hour forty of your time?
Thunder Force begins strongly with a nice comic book style opening delivering slick exposition about the backstory of the city and its characters, a quirky feature which is brought back in the film’s closing credits. It also sets up the girls well with their close friendship quickly but believably established when the two meet as kids after Emily Stanton’s (Spencer) parents are killed by Miscreants and Lydia Berman (McCarthy) defends her from bullies.
Unfortunately, once the two have grown up and become estranged from each other, the film becomes a predictable slog that rarely ever picks up with a boring script and plain cookie cutter supervillains. The cinematography is bland and uninteresting, with nothing that particularly stands out as anything special, although the special effects for action sequences are plausible and well done. The film is a generic, conventional superhero movie through and through with nothing new to say, but it is perfectly watchable with crowd pleasing moments such as the display of cool costumes and mildly exciting action with some chuckles here and there.
Although comedy is of course subjective to personal taste, the film falls flat in regard to its humour overall, with McCarthy’s improvs coming across as more grating than charming and it is her usual style of humour we have seen many times before. The film employs huge talent with the likes of Octavia Spencer, however her character as the intelligent scientist is uninteresting and it is massive shame that her talents were not put to better use with a richer, more engaging screenplay. She gives a perfectly serviceable performance; as with the rest of the film, there is nothing that really shines here.
Thunder Force is by no means a downright awful film as many viewers are claiming it to be, however, the bland and uninspired narrative and production will certainly not knock your socks off. It will probably find an audience somewhere, but for many it will be a forgotten superhero flick that came and went.
Thunder Force (2021) Film Trailer:
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