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Someone, please stop Ben Falcone. The husband and creative partner of Melissa McCarthy have co-written and/or directed such subpar vehicles for the Bridesmaids breakout as The Boss, Tammy, Life of the Party, and Superintelligence. Now, he’s squandering her shot at superhero glory in the calamitous comedy Thunder Force.
Written and directed by Falcone, Thunder Force stars McCarthy as Lydia Berman, a blue collar Chicagoan who unexpectedly acquires superpowers. So, she joins forces with her childhood bestie Emily Stanton (Octavia Spencer), a genius geneticist who has her own super serum. Together, they fight to protect the Windy City from “Miscreants,” mutated supervillains who boast outrageous strength, plasma blasting palms, and—uh—the arms of a giant crab!
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Despite some quirky deviations, this superhero story is cobbled together from stolen parts. Emily’s backstory rips off Batman’s orphan origin then adds a dash of Tony Stark’s expertise in science and business showmanship. Meanwhile, clumsy but lovable Lydia bumbles into her powers Peter Parker-style, complete with precarious access to a high-tech lab. Their acquiring of invisibility and super strength, respectively, might be a nod to The Incredibles. Then, they must face down foes while learning to work as a team, despite having very different personalities! (See The Avengers, The Justice League, The LEGO Batman Movie.)
Thunder Force hits plenty of superhero cliches, from the discovery of powers to the reveals of the super suit, flashy tech, villainous destruction, and a lurking Big Bad. Unfortunately, these presumably big moments aren’t given the fanfare expected of the genre. Instead, all of the above is treated as a checklist that Falcone is racing through. There are no awe-striking close-ups of Thunder Force’s costumes or their custom purple Lamborghini. No tension is built into the lead-up to their nemesis’s reveal. The determination of their superhero names is not a resounding epiphany but instead buried in a tumble of jokey pitches. Likewise, Pom Klementieff’s (Guardians of the Galaxy) icy performance as a snarling Miscreant is never given its proper chance to blow us away.
Even the action sequences are treated like a chore. They rush by with bursts of CG explosions and uninspired stunts, cut together with all the care of a blind-folded child making confetti. It seems as if Falcone has zero interest in superhero movies, and is lazily employing their iconography as a flimsy framing for a bland buddy comedy.
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The core of this story is all about the odd couple of Lydia and Emily. The former is a frizzy-haired goofball with a heart of gold, who loves a party as much as a good fight. The latter is a brainy and ever-buttoned-up perfectionist, whose solemn ambition overrides every part of her life. Of course, they will learn to be a bit like each other to become a great team and better people. But as with the superhero narrative, this is painfully predictable and underbaked. The plot points of meeting, bonding, and breaking up are lumbered through in a tedious first act set across their shared childhood. (However, props are deserved for the child actresses Bria Danielle and McCarthy’s daughter Vivian Falcone, who convincingly capture Spencer’s grace and McCarthy’s loose-limbed clowning.) Their reunion is curt and clumsy, doing little to establish comedic chemistry before barreling into the inciting incident that kicks off the superhero stuff.
The buddy-comedy schtick and the superhero spectacle are artlessly smashed together to allow for silliness both grounded and high-concept. But most of the jokes just plain stink. There are childish insults. (“Get in the dumpster because that’s where garbage goes!”) There’s wordplay that doesn’t play. (“Both of them were lady parts doctors?” “No. Geneticists.”) Then, there are tiresome bits that run on and on with fumbled punchlines, poor impressions, confoundingly out-of-nowhere allusions, and toothless slapstick. It doesn’t feel written as much as spitballed, as if Falcone urged his cast to chuck out whatever crossed their mind. But instead of including only what stuck, he just left in a lot of soft, sloppy lobs.
The only thing that works in this woefully wonky comedy is a subplot between Lydia and a half-man/half-crab, played by McCarthy’s Identity Thief co-star, Jason Bateman. These two have chaotic chemistry that sparks a sense of spontaneity. Here the film actually has some fun with the superhero concept by spoofing the hero/villain romance line with a very unsexy mutation treated as if it’s a supreme kink. Things get weird with butter, Old Bay, and a sequined dance number. Throwing themselves into all that with abandon, McCarthy and Bateman are downright hilarious. In these madcap moments, Thunder Force shows promise by digging into the premise with a Mystery Men precision of parody and oddity. Sadly, these bits of goofy glory are few and far between.
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