This past weekend, Melissa McCarthy’s new super hero movie, “Thunder Force” dropped on Netflix. Despite it starring the hilarious talents of Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer, sadly this super hero farce just falls flat on the comedic spectrum. Although it does have some funny moments and one-liners, overall the movie is just too ridiculous and not clever enough to gain much of a positive opinion. Even the addition of the hysterical Jason Bateman, does nothing for the film as they make him *spoiler* half-crab/half-man–which isn’t funny, its just weird. I get that they were going for that ridiculous element in an effort to be more comedic, but they just overshot. It was definitely ridiculous, but it was not funny.
The movie has a decent premise, rogue super-villains an a need for super heroes, and it could have ended up being humorous, but there was just too much cheesiness and not enough story or depth to make it engaging. Even the funny moments were swallowed up in the lame puns, over-the-top physical humor and straight up stupidity. The idea of people being given super powers is definitely intriguing (and has been used many times in other formats for a very engaging story!), but it just didn’t work this time. If we compare “Thunder Force” to a similar movie, say “ShaZam!”, we can see how this kind of plot and style could go well.
Although “Shazam” was not an amazing film, it had a similar plot and was at least interesting to watch. Again the main character was given super powers by accident. Again it was supposed to be funny and comedic and have a lot of silly elements. And again there was supposed to be some decent action and story plot. It was also a family-friendly film and although it had humor, it was not over-the-top cheesy and ended up being fairly cute. If we compare the two films, although “Thunder Force” had bigger names, it was ONLY the big name stars that give this film any credence at all. Were it not for McCarthy, Spencer and Bateman, this film would not even have been made and would immediately be tossed in the junk pile.
Sorry Ladies! I really, really, wanted to love it!
