Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer team up to play superheroes in Netflix’s newest flop. Photo from midwestfilmjournal.com.
The Netflix original action-comedy movie “Thunder Force” starring Octavia Spencer and Melissa McCarthy premiered on Friday, lacking both thunder and force.
It tells the story of two childhood friends Emily (Spencer) and Lydia (McCarthy) who reunite after a falling out, only to become superpowered heroes due to Emily’s work with gene-altering serums to fight supervillains known as “Miscreants.” Emily has the power of invisibility and Lydia has super strength. Their journey throughout the city streets of Chicago ends with a lot of destruction, and interesting situations.
On a positive note, I enjoyed the dialogue and relationship between Lydia and Emily’s daughter, Tracy. Lydia acted like her “cool aunt,” allowing her to let loose and act like a typical teenage girl, rather than an expert scientist working in a lab with her mother. Their friendship was a crucial part of the movie’s message about the importance of family.
As for the negatives … Yikes, this movie was hard to watch. Lydia and Emily’s characters felt rushed and lacked any complexity. Both are easily defined: Emily is the smart one, while Lydia provides most of the comedic relief. I don’t think I laughed at any of the jokes told by either McCarthy or Spencer. There are some comedic situations that these characters get themselves into, but nothing especially funny, though Lydia’s clumsiness in Emily’s laboratory did grant a chuckle or two.
I never felt connected to any of the characters, including the villains. Their motivations were unclear and hard to follow. Bobby Canavale’s character, “The King,” was confusing and supposed to be a shocking character, but he felt drab and very boring. Jason Bateman as “The Crab” was a strange addition, especially in terms of his romantic encounters with Lydia; their connection was so weird and uncomfortable to watch. “Laser,” Pom Klementieff’s character, is a generic bad guy with cheesy one-liners and horrible dialogue.
Neither of the main actors that made up “Thunder Force” seemed especially interested in their roles, especially Octavia Spencer. She never seemed to have fun at all throughout the movie, even during entertaining scenes. McCarthy seemed more interested than her partner, but still not great.
For a PG-13 movie, the jokes seemed very immature, and there were no real memorable moments for me. The over-reliance on McCarthy’s physical humor was a bit much, as she is used to diffuse awkward situations by breaking something or falling hard.
Visually, this movie looked very artificial. The special effects were atrocious and the costume design was lazy. The two heroes’ costumes looked like blank templates from the pre-production of an actually serious action movie. “The Crab” was such a lazy choice for a character and his design is no different; definitely not Bateman’s best performance.
Action-comedies rarely work, and “Thunder Force” exemplifies this point perfectly. This was a half-hearted attempt by Netflix to create a good crossover movie. Obviously this is supposed to be a fun, lighthearted movie, but I was so uninterested while watching.
Currently “Thunder Force” has a 25 percent critic rating and 24 percent audience rate on Rotten Tomatoes, which is pretty bad, and I don’t disagree. “Thunder Force” is a miss, and a waste of tremendous acting talent from the cast.
Rating: 3.7/10. Not worth a rewatch.