SUPERHEROES FOILED BY A DEADLY SCRIPT
Thunder Force (12)
Verdict: A damp squib ★★✩✩✩
MELISSA McCarthy can perhaps be forgiven for producing and starring in this feeble superheroes spoof, which is laughable only in the sense of being risibly unfunny; her husband, Ben Falcone, is the writer and director.
She duly gives it everything in her power, gurning madly and putting on silly voices when all else fails, meaning the script. But it is not enough. And nor is her mildly disconcerting double act with Octavia Spencer, looking ill-at-ease throughout, as though she has absent-mindedly meandered into somebody else’s iffy comedy career.
The pair play former schoolfriends whose paths have since diverged dramatically. Emily (Spencer) has become a famous technology mogul, while Lydia (McCarthy) remains stuck in the old working- class Chicago neighbourhood.
But after years of estrangement they reunite to take on the evil Miscreants, criminals with superpowers, who are tormenting the city.
In ways far too silly to explain, Lydia acquires superhuman strength and Emily gains a cloak of invisibility, giving them a fighting chance of resisting an egomaniacal politician (Bobby Cannavale), who has the Miscreants in his pocket.
Thunder Force has only one ace, in the form of a Miscreant known as The Crab. Half-man, half-crustacean, with pincers for arms, he is played amusingly by Jason Bateman, delivering some good lines with characteristic laid-back aplomb.
I laughed out loud, possibly as much as twice. But without The Crab, the movie goes sideways. n Thunder Force is on netflix now.