Cosmic-ray blasts. Sociopaths-turned-lethal villains. Two friends taking on the supreme evil. On the face of it, this superhero film has everything going for it. But the interesting bits stop right there. Finally the only entertaining parts in Ben Falcone’s latest Netflix film, Thunder Force, are the leads—the talented Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer. Though billed as a ‘superhero comedy’, the fifth film from the husband-wife duo, Falcone and McCarthy, Thunder Force kind of warns us that we may be running dry on good superhero content. With its forced LOL moments, it is definitely not in the same league-or-half of The Incredibles or even Deadpool.
So what’s the plot? In a world filled with superpowered baddies named Miscreants, a nerdy schoolgirl who has lost her parents to them forms a friendship with a ‘cool’ girl with a devil-may-care attitude. As adults, they once again cross paths after Lydia (McCarthy) gets herself mistakenly injected by a superhero serum Emily (Spencer) has created. Yes, the serum is back again, after its usage in the recent series, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. This results in Lydia and Emily turning into a crime-fighting duo.
One would expect McCarthy and Spencer to be a dream acting team. The trouble is… they are. The comedy is bogged down by the performances. One’s an Academy Award-winner and the other has been nominated twice, but both do not belong in this universe. McCarthy’s gags, in particular, feel like duplicates and fail to cause amusement, let alone hilarity. A repeated gag idea is Lydia consuming raw chicken breasts as a delicacy. It doesn’t work the first time; it doesn’t work during the other times as well. Pom Klementieff, known for playing Mantis in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Bobby Cannavale get reduced to one-dimensional villain stereotypes. The scenes involving Jason Bateman, as an ambiguous henchman with crab claws for arms, are one of a few scenes that evoke a hint of a laugh.
At a time where studios realise the value of making multiple films a year to slowly build a superhero world, Thunder Force is the opposite. It rushes through plot and character development. The lackadaisical and mirthless writing weigh this film down. The film may have worked as a superhero spoof or perhaps even as a feel-good comedy about friendship, but it gets stuck somewhere in between. In his films, Deadpool often laments about how hard it is to do a superhero landing. With Thunder Force, you realise that landing a good superhero script is harder.