Thunder Force: A Walking Disaster
Thunder Force is a story that takes place in a world where supervillains are commonplace and we follow two estranged best friends as they reunite after one devises a treatment that gives them powers to protect their city and it is, in all sincerity, one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. It’s hard to put into words just how bad of a film this is.
It’s painfully unfunny, contrived, cookie cutter, derivative and any other adjective you can come up with to describe something so uninspired it makes you question just how movies get greenlit in the first place. Melissa McCarthy is at her most annoying sputtering random nonsense that’s meant to be humorous. Oscar worthy actors and actresses are wasted here with bland dialogue and boring scene after boring scene with stock character types like Bobby Canavale as the surprise surprise bad mayor or Pom Klementieff as the femme fettale supervillain who does absolutely nothing or Melissa Leo as the Alfred type butler to the stars. It just goes on and on and it is brutal to sit through.
I laughed all of once throughout the almost 2 hour run time and it’s all thanks to the one man who knows how to turn shit into a sandwich, my man Jason Bateman as The Crab. A supervillain who was bit on the penis by a lobster and now he has claws as arms. Other than that this movie is torture to get through and it blows my mind how they keep letting Ben Falcone (Melissa McCarthy’s husband) write and direct movies. Between this, Tammy, Superintelligence, & Life of the Party it astounds me that they keep giving this man chances while better directors are left floundering after one flop.
This is a movie to avoid at all costs, unless you’re a glutton for punishment like me and need to watch every new movie that comes around. I struggle to even want to break this movie down but I will because it goes to show that you can write a movie by the book and do everything right and still produce a giant turd.
Our opening image is two scenes too late as we see Melissa McCarthy as a townie who works at a shipping container yard and regularly sees miscreant activity around her neighborhood. These scenes do help establish the world and the rules of this world and there’s nothing wrong with them on a textbook level. Their problem is that they do nothing unique to add to the superhero genre. This is a movie that’s been attempted before to ill effect. Movies like My Super Ex-Girlfriend or Superhero Movie come to mind, just derivative comedy not worthy of being lampooned.
The Inciting Incident is Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer reuniting at Spencer’s lab where she has finally created a treatment that will give normal people super hero abilities to fight the miscreants that run amok, and with the laziest amount of writing possible. McCarthy just starts pressing buttons in the lab that unwittingly ends up injecting her with the treatment for super strength. Just so uninspired and been there, done that. Every trope used in this movie has been used elsewhere with better effect. This movie desperately needed a ghost writer or two, or three.
Our break into two is Spencer’s company keeping McCarthy on to continue giving her the treatments as it be a waste of the formula and millions of dollars to let her go so now she and Spenser will become superheroes and the road to mending their estranged friendship can begin.
We segway into our B Story where we learn of the reelection efforts of the mayor played by Bobby Canavale and surprise surprise he is a miscreant himself who is unionizing the other miscreants to help keep him in power.
The fun and games section of the movie is super ironic as it is not fun in the slightest as we get a training montage of McCarthy and Spencer adapting and honing their powers and taking their treatments to fully become super and it all culminates in their first outing as superheroes as they stop a robbery in the city that’s being orchestrated by Bateman’s The Crab. The training montage is light and moves quickly but it is hampered down by unfunny scenes and painful dialogue. I can’t imagine anyone, even die hard McCarthy fans, being happy with this film.
From there we charge towards our midpoint where the team has a falling out as their personalities clash and what made them separate the first time undoes them again this time around. McCarthy’s raunchy, fun loving attitude clashes with Spencer’s no nonsense approach and it lasts all of five seconds as McCarthy goes on a date with the Crab (leading to the only funny scene in the film) and then the next day goes to Spencer to apologize and give the info they need to stop the mayor. It’s laughably bad and feels like the movie isn’t even trying. It’s a film that feels like it was fun for nobody but the stars, who are all friends in real life. It feels like a painful adam sandler movie where he just cares about hanging out with buddies having fun instead of making a movie that will please his audience.
The bad guys close in with the mayor making an attempt to bring Spenser and McCarthy into his stable of baddies to remain in power. The scene is chock full of boring dialogue and for reasons that have nothing to do with the main character, the mayor ends up losing the reelection like three scenes later freeing him up to bomb his opponents victory gala, which makes it feel like the villain had no plan whatsoever for the entire movie. Things just happen here, there’s no over arching goal or picture other than unionize the miscreants but that doesn’t play into the finale at all.
The finale is a hodgepodge of nonsense as McCarthy and Spenser try to stop the bombing from happening and again for reason not explained, Spenser’s daughter arrives having super speed. Even though it was said there were only two vials in the beginning of the film and the vials took years to bring to trials but whatever. We’re racing to the finish line now. They beat the villain and McCarthy decides to jump in the river with the bomb since her super strength can withstand the blast and that brings Spenser and McCarthy back together again because of course.
The new mayor gives them her thanks and wants to start her own superhero alliance to combat the miscreants. McCarthy, Spenser and Spenser’s daughter are now the new hot super team on the block and the camera pans up as McCarthy and Spenser dance in the street as the crowd chants their name putting a cap on this bad boy that wasted an hour and forty seven minutes of my life.
This is a movie that is such a missed opportunity taking advantage of a genre that didn’t need this type of film. The superhero genre is already oversaturated as it is and movies like this do nothing to help keep the genre afloat. Uninspired scenes, crappy dialogue, cheap outdate pops like fortnight dances, and boring action scenes ensure this movie is dead on arrival.
So there you have it. If you’re a glutton for punishment check it out, otherwise skip it and keep searching netflix for the one thing they actually create that’s good; documentaries. Until next time, Adventure On!