{"id":16274,"date":"2021-04-09T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-09T07:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=16274"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:14:45","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:14:45","slug":"review-thunder-force","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/review-thunder-force\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Thunder Force<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There\u2019s a lot about the Netflix superhero comedy Thunder Force<\/em> that feels unforgivably lazy. It\u2019s full of creaky jokes, baffling design choices, and sections that suffer from strangely poor production values. Even Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer, usually excellent performers, feel off their game in roles that should be fun. There is one element, however, which transcends all of this and suggests a better, weirder movie that could have been. It is this: Jason Bateman plays a guy with crab claws for arms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
(Cr. HOPPER STONE\/NETFLIX \u00a9 2021.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bateman\u2019s morally shifty character The Crab is one of a number of normal people given super-abilities after an explosion of radioactivity. Other characters have pretty standard powers like laser eyes or super strength. Bateman walks around with giant crab pincers that he clacks seductively at McCarthy\u2019s character, and which make it impossible for him to hold a martini glass. It\u2019s a fantastic, bizarre choice that hints Ben Falcone\u2019s movie could have headed to Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar<\/em><\/a> territory, and would have been better for it. Unfortunately, Thunder Force<\/em> commits instead to being a cliche, sort-of superhero satire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thunder Force begins in the 1980s, when the aforementioned radioactive event gave superhuman abilities to a number of civilians, creating a population of supervillains known as miscreants. Spencer\u2019s Emily Stanton and McCarthy\u2019s Lydia Berman are childhood friends who met after Emily\u2019s parents were killed. As adults, Emily–a biotech billionaire–and Lydia, a dock worker, reconnect when Lydia inadvertently takes some super-soldier serum that Emily has created. Now the pair have to join forces to stop The King (Bobby Cannavale), a power-hungry Chicago mayoral candidate, and his miscreant lackeys, Laser (Pom Klementieff) and Bateman\u2019s aforementioned human-crustacean hybrid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
(Cr. HOPPER STONE\/NETFLIX \u00a9 2021.)\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The script here (also written by Falcone) feels uninspired, relying on exposition-dumps via TV news segments, and recycling familiar tropes both from comics and cartoons, as well as McCarthy\u2019s repertoire. Lydia is basically The Heat\u2019s<\/em> Mullins minus the Irish-Catholic family dynamics. Spencer\u2019s Emily has a good backstory that hints at some interesting points regarding the pressure sometimes felt by people of color to achieve dreams their family couldn\u2019t. However, those elements are never fully developed, and the character ends up feeling joyless and flat, something that comes across in Spencer\u2019s lackluster performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then we get to those crab hands. Bateman and McCarthy both make an absolute meal out of them (literally–there\u2019s a wild moment involving some Old Bay seasoning, and a running joke about shellfish). Everything else in Thunder Force<\/em> feels thuddingly obvious and unsurprising. Bateman\u2019s giant claws, however, are weird enough and funny enough that you can\u2019t help wishing the rest of the movie was willing to lean into that element and just go for broke. Instead, there\u2019s a tonal imbalance between it and the more sincere parts that gives the sense that Falcone is just unable to pick a lane. Ultimately, he\u2019s picked the easier and duller of the two roads, which is extra disappointing, given the more creative option that\u2019s staring the rest of us in the face. \"\"\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

C-<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

“Thunder Force” is now streaming on Netflix<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n