Thunder Force

Thunder Force
Thunder Force, they are as "newly super" and "almost heroes" indeed, right?
Genre: Comedy Superhero Directed by: Ben Falcone Produced by: Ben Falcone Melissa McCarthy Marc Platt Adam Siegel Written by: Ben Falcone Starring: Melissa McCarthy Octavia Spencer Bobby Cannavale Pom Klementieff Kevin Dunn Melissa Leo Jason Bateman Cinematography: Barry Peterson Distributed by: Netflix Release date: April 9, 2021 Runtime: 107 minutes Country: United States Language: English

"This movie's about as amusing as a f**king cancer diagnosis."

— The Critical Drinker

Thunder Force is a 2021 American superhero comedy film, written and directed by Ben Falcone, and starring his wife Melissa McCarthy, Octavia Spencer, Jason Bateman, Bobby Cannavale, Pom Klementieff, Taylor Mosby, and Melissa Leo.

Plot

In a world where only supervillains have superpowers, two estranged childhood best friends reunite after one creates a formula that gives them powers, becoming the first superhero team.

Why This Movie is a Blunder that's Forced

1. The characters are bland and don't have any development.
   • Melissa McCarthy's character, Lydia, is particularly unlikable, as she's incredibly annoying, idiotic, and makes terrible jokes.
2. The movie just isn't funny.
   • The humor is juvenile; in particular, there's a lot of fat jokes and gross-out humor.
   • There's some slapstick, but it's uninspired and often literally falls flat.
   • There's a lot of bad improv in some scenes, which drag on for longer than they should.
   • There's a gross gag where Melissa McCarthy's character keeps eating raw chicken, which keeps getting repeated.
   • Any scene involving both Jerry the Crab and Lydia together. Enough said.
3. Octavia Spencer was horribly miscast; with her history of dramatic roles, she doesn't really fit in a comedy movie.
4. Most of the acting is pretty bad. Octavia Spencer (which is a surprise because she is usually pretty good at acting) in particular only seems to be halfheartedly saying her lines.
5. Like with movies such as Ghostbusters (2016), all the male characters except for Crab Man (to an extent) are portrayed as either evil, straight up idiots, or simple background extras.
6. Use of several dated references, such as the floss and shoot dances and the mobile version of Fortnite, which by the time the movie released, is now considered a discontinued version of the game due to it being pulled from Google Play and the App Store the year prior due to legal issues. (Speaking of Fortnite, it runs at an unrealistically low fps for no explained reason, even for a mobile device)
7. Horrible editing that looks like something straight out of an Adobe video editing program.
8. It's so unrealistic even for a superhero movie.
9. Cheap-looking special effects.
10. Tries too hard to cash in successes towards comedy superhero movies like Deadpool for example.
11. It can take a really long time for the story to get anywhere. Not only that, some scenes can drag on for too long.
12. The tie-in theme song of the same name is horribly written.

Redeeming Qualities

1. Decent acting from Jason Bateman.
2. The idea of only supervillains having superpowers is by itself interesting if only the movie using it was written better.
3. The early parts of the movie, where Emily and Lydia become friends, are pretty sweet. Quite frankly, it's the only good scene in the entire movie, which is really saying something.
   • In fact, the early part of the movie has some good points that could be a good story if it were expanded upon. But it's abruptly dropped after the first half of the movie in favor of the movie's "comedy".          

Reception

The movie received mostly negative reviews, with a 25% critic and 27% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and the consensus "It's got a few chuckles, but Thunder Force is largely a superhero comedy that's neither exciting nor funny -- and an egregious waste of its co-stars' talents".

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