Half-baked superhero comedy

Half-baked superhero comedy

Director Ben Falcone's Thunder Force on Netflix fails to hit the mark with mediocre storytelling and forced jokes

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Half-baked superhero comedy
Melissa McCarthy as Lydia and Octavia Spencer as Emily in a scene from Thunder Force. (Photo © NETFLIX)

It's not difficult to tell the difference between good and bad comedy movies. A good comedy is simply a film that makes us laugh, and those that fail to do that are easily forgotten. When I first heard that the latest Netflix original Thunder Force was written and directed by Melissa McCarthy's husband, Ben Falcone, who has also directed movies like Tammy (2014), The Boss (2016), Life Of The Party (2018) and Superintelligence (2020), I was bracing for the worst. Although Thunder Force may be a step up from Falcone's previous films as it attempts to bring a new story to the table -- the superhero angle in this case -- everything else is straight from the script, from execution to the jokes which all missed the mark.

The premise of Thunder Force is a world where supervillains are common. The plot revolves around two girls named Lydia (Melissa McCarthy) and Emily (Octavia Spencer) who first met each other in grade school and quickly became best friends. However, the two become caught up in a rift which causes them to go their separate ways. Decades later, Lydia reaches out to her old friend and decides to visit Emily -- now a successful scientist -- at her office.

As she's observing the high-tech equipment, Lydia accidentally gets injected with a serum that gives her superpowers. The two then decide to team up as Thunder Force in order to protect their city from a group of supervillains known as the Miscreants.

One of the things that Falcone did right with Thunder Force compared to his previous films is that he was able to create an interesting superhero and related elements. In the first 10 minutes, we get to learn that a comet has hit Earth and some people are being affected by radiation, which then gives them special abilities. We also see how Lydia's character stumbles upon these special abilities and learns how to control them. So, I think the superhero elements were surprisingly the best aspect of this movie. But apart from that, the plot of this movie is pretty thin and obvious, in which audiences can predict everything that is coming. We don't need superpowers like X-ray vision to guess what is going to happen next. Each villain is also uninteresting and their plan just isn't impactful. Their motivations aren't threatening either and their characters aren't complex. For example, there's a Miscreant whose troubling activity is robbing liquor stores. In fact, this movie relies on a bunch of absurdities to propel the plot and sometimes it feels like a kid wrote the story and then an adult went in and added stuff to try and make it more interesting.

McCarthy is a good comedian and while the films in which she worked with director Paul Feig like The Heat (2013), Spy (2015),and Ghostbusters (2016) were fairly decent, her talent doesn't seem to work here. Though it's not really her fault, it's more the writing behind the characters. The biggest problem with this movie is I did not find Falcone's direction in handling comedy appealing. There are quite a few times where the joke is held out too long in an attempt to create over the top, ridiculous humour.

It seems like Falcone relies heavily on his wife's character and her comedic beats to just continue from adlib to improv scene and he just does not know when to say cut. There are many moments in this film where the jokes just go on and on for minutes without good reason. When the jokes don't land, it becomes forced and annoying. They're almost like a series of small gags and situations that are loosely tied together. However, if you like superhero movies and don't mind watching something that is a little bit entertaining and are willing to sit through mediocre storytelling, Thunder Force can be an OK choice. It's not unwatchable, but it's definitely not worth a rewatch.

  • Thunder Force
  • Starring Melissa McCarthy, Octavia Spencer, Bobby Cannavale, Jason Bateman
  • Directed by Ben Falcone
  • Now streaming on Netflix
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