IN ‘THUNDER FORCE,’ SUPERHEROES NOT SO SUPER
Comedy depicts unlikely partners in mission to rid world of “miscreants”
The strengths and the weaknesses of “Thunder Force” are apparent from its first minutes: The strengths are Melissa Mccarthy and Octavia Spencer. The weaknesses are emotional phoniness and a tendency toward sentimentality.
Still, the new Netflix comedy has a decent share of laughs and a shrewd science fiction premise behind it.
Apparently, some cosmic event caused a superhero gene to be let loose on Earth, but — and this is the interesting part — it remained dormant in the vast majority of people. The gene expressed itself only within sociopaths, so as the movie begins, there are sociopathic “superheroes,” or “miscreants” as they’re called here, walking the Earth and doing terrible things with impunity.
This is refreshing, the notion of the superpowerful as inherently evil, as for at least the past decade we have been living in an era of superhero propaganda, akin in its naivete to the pro space-alien era that Steven Spielberg launched in the 1970s and ’80s. “Thunder Force” doesn’t capitalize on its premise or even follow it to its logical conclusion, but still, it’s nice to get an alternative viewpoint.
The movie is at its funniest in the early going. Lydia (Mccarthy) has a regular job, while Emily (Spencer) has become a major geneticist and entrepreneur who owns an entire office building. One night, Lydia shows up at Emily’s building to invite her to their high school reunion, and in a classic comedy set-up, she is left alone in a room and told not to touch anything.
Next thing we know, she has accidentally strapped herself to a chair and is getting injected with chemicals to turn her into a physical match for the miscreants. Emily was intending to take these treatments herself, but now she’s forced to work directly through Lydia, who is impulsive and lacks judgment.
With the two women cast as temperamental opposites, Spencer has the understated role, but she uses understatement to good comic effect. At one point, she has to tell her friend that she can’t leave the facility, that Lydia has no choice
but to get follow-up treatments to complete the superhero process. Gently, as though this were a reasonable thing to tell someone, Emily warns of the consequences: “It’s entirely possible that your body will violently explode over the weekend.”
But “Thunder Force” goes downhill when it has to follow through on its story.
Once the two women are fighting the miscreants — among them Bobby Cannavale as a Trump-like politician — it’s basically a series of superhero battles, inflected with some physical humor. The likability of Lydia and Emily helps, but writer-director Ben Falcone’s tendency to milk emotion that isn’t there drags down the movie and some of the comic bits feel obvious and pushed.
Yet “Thunder Force” is notable in one unexpected and unintended way: It was written more than two years ago and filmed in the fall of 2019, long before any of us were thinking about the coronavirus, and yet the movie is like an allegory for the virus and the vaccine.
Think about it: the miscreants constitute a weird natural occurrence that comes out of nowhere, causes death,
demolishes social life and stalls the economy. And the one solution to the problem? It’s to inject people with chemicals — chemicals that give normal people the strength to fight off the deadly miscreants.
Anyway, that’s just something to consider if you decide to watch “Thunder Force” and need an extra rooting interest.
A “Willy’s Wonderland”: Nicholas Cage stars as the unnamed janitor of the titular theme park, now condemned.
A drifter tricked into taking the job, Cage’s ho-hum custodial work takes a deadly turn when the amusement park’s animatronics come to life. Also starring Emily Tosta and Beth Grant.
Also new on DVD
A “Ancient Aliens: Season 13”:
The long-running History Channel program explores theories that aliens visited the planet in ancient times and helped spur human civilization at various crucial moments.
New on demand
A “The Last Animals”: This documentary explores the effort to save endangered elephants and rhinos from extinction, focusing on the conservationists, scientists,
poachers and criminal networks involved.
A “Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist”: Friedkin, the director of the horror classic “The Exorcist,” explores his filmmaking, including how his faith and fate influenced his career, in this documentary.