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AQUAMAN (12A)

AFTER putting Ben Affleck’s depressed Batman and Henry Cavill’s dour Superman out of their misery, DC Comics decided to change tack.

In tone, the first solo adventure for Jason Momoa’s hulking man from Atlantis feels closer to Marvel’s knockabout Thor movies than DC’s downbeat Batman v Superman.

This was probably the right move but horror director James Wan wasn’t the man to pull it off.

At times, it’s hard to tell whether he is being intentionally funny.

At key moments in the fight scenes, Momoa tosses his hair in slow-motion like he’s in an aftershave ad. Is this knowingly naff or just naff ?

And how to take a film that uses Toto’s cheesy 1982 hit Africa as a musical cue for a trip to the Sahara desert?

If you’re asking these questions, you’re probably not laughing. Thankfully, the plot is lot more straightforward.

Aquaman is born Arthur Curry, the half-human, half-merman love child of Nicole Kidman’s Atlantean queen and Temuera Morrison’s lighthouse keeper.

When we jump forward a couple of decades, Arthur has become pirate-fighting superhero Aquaman.

Then Atlantean princess Mera (Amber Heard) surfaces to persuade him to take the Atlantean throne from his half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) who has just declared war on the land-dwellers.

The climatic battle is suitably epic, but it feels like you’re watching a cut-scene from a video game.