Thunder Force
Love her or hate her, Melissa McCarthy is a force to be reckoned with. She has done everything from TV, Improv, SNL, to major movies. She was even nominated for an academy award. In between all of her incredibly successful ventures, she and her husband, Ben Falcone, spend their time making some really cringe-worthy comedies. Their latest Netflix film Thunder Force is no exception.
The story is not unique, Two best friends, Lydia, played by McCarthy, and Emily, played by Octavia Spencer, who could not be more different lose touch, only to find themselves needing to work together to save the world. Lydia is a screw-up. She is crass, a slob working a dead-end job, and is happy to stay that way. Emily, on the other hand, is a straight-up genius, who is working to create a serum to give people superpowers to fight off the miscreants (sociopaths who got superpowers from a meteor). The two old friends have lost touch but through a series of really questionable decisions on Lydia’s part, they each end up with half of the serum to make them have superpowers.
Lydia has super strength and Emily has invisibility. Together they become the superhero team, Thunder Force.
The odd couple/buddy cop story has been done time and again. However, what should make this movie stand out is that it is 40-year-old women being superheroes. It is breaking the norm and could be really new and fresh. I was hoping it would be even a satire of superheroes, which could have been unique and funny in our over-saturated superhero culture. However, they choose to go a different path. They went more absurd with the whole movie, which leads to shock comedy, and a really gross running joke about eating raw chicken. They missed the chance to be original in any way that counts. The movie felt like a recycled story with nonsensical jokes, shock humor, and Jason Bateman in the corniest prosthetic crab arms I have ever seen.
Jason Bateman plays The Crab, a miscreant who isn’t all that bad and who has crab arms and also likes Lydia. Bateman is a brilliant straight man (ie: Arrested Development), he is a respected dramatic actor and director (ie: Ozark), and for some reason, he chose to be in this movie. But this is the story with almost everyone in this film. Many characters are respected actors and comedians who have had impressive careers and then somehow ended up in this dumpster fire of a movie. My hunch is that once you are a certain level of famous, you can make career decisions based on having fun working with your friends. Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone are beloved in Hollywood, not by critics or executives, but by other actors and directors, and people love to work with them. They get the Octavia Spencers and Jason Batemans, because they are all old friends who love working together and would pretty much do anything together.
This movie feels like a bunch of creative friends got together and said wouldn’t be funny if… however, this group of friends own a movie studio and can make all of those ideas, good and bad, a reality. That is a dangerous thing for creative people. I ultimately don’t know why they made this movie. There aren’t a lot of deep life lessons to be learned from Thunder Force. There are the stereotypical life lessons, that everyone has value and no talent is better than the other, teamwork is what matters, friendship is important, and so on. Not to say those are bad lessons, but they are pretty much as deep as any Disney channel movie, or Hallmark film. So with only a few laughable moments and no real moral, there just isn’t much to this movie.
Ultimately this movie is fun, but not for the audience. I believe that the people who made Thunder Force had a blast and laughed really hard at the absurd, gross, and painful comedy, that now we all get to sit through. It seems like they made it for themselves because it was fun. This is the great struggle of the comedy genre, to find the balance between making something for yourself, that makes you and your friends laugh and you are proud of regardless of how the movie performs and making something more conventional that will likely do better at the box office. Ben Falcone and Melissa Mccarthy seem to have landed on comedic artistic integrity at all costs. That is respectable and commendable, but it leaves us with a barely watchable film that left this reviewer confused, unsatisfied, and a little nauseated (again raw chicken).
Content Overview:
Language: As much as you can fit into a movie and still make it PG-13.
Sexual Content: This is a weird thing to say, but there are lots of sex jokes involving The Crab and Lydia and garlic butter. They do sleep together, and while there isn’t any nudity, it was one of the more uncomfortable things I have watched.
Other references and jokes made about sex from Lydia to Emily.
Emily’s Grandmother thinks that Lydia and Emily are a couple and even brings out a wedding cake topper with two women on it.
Violence: Oh so much violence. Being a superhero movie there is normal destruction and violence. On top of that one of the miscreants named Laser just loves to kill people. She just kills for fun and really enjoys almost killing Thunder Force. Another miscreant named The King gives a grad a hug and squeezes him to death with his super strength. The King also just pulls off The Crabs claws which is surprising and gross. Lydia consistently injures her trainer. One thug is tased, and Emily’s taser was set on the highest setting, so he suffers huge burns across his face.
Objectionable content: Lydia drinks curdled milk, eats raw chicken, and is just generally gross. Lydia disrespects all authority including Emily.
If you are not a fan of awkward humor you will find this movie objectionable.
