REVIEW: Thunder Force Doesn’t Quite Bring the Thunder

For years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Universe have taken over the film world. From Batman to Captain America, fans have watched their favorite comic characters come to life on the big screen and now Netflix is joining the superhero game. From the mind of Ben Falcone comes Thunder Force, a super hero movie focused on friendship,

Thunder Force opens in 1983 when a massive pulse of cosmic rays hit Earth creating a genetic transformation in a select few individuals giving them superpowers. Instead of using their powers for good, these “Miscreants” use theirs talents to rob, cheat, and steal from the “regular” humans. Scientists are determined to find a way to give humans their own superpowers to be able to fight against the “Miscreants”, but the only people to even get semi-close to finding a solution are the parents Emily Stanton (Octavia Spencer).

When her parents are killed by a “Miscreant”, their 112 year old daughter, Emily, will stop at nothing to complete their work. It is only a few weeks later that she meets Lydia Berman (Melissa McCarthy). A slacker with a hate for school, Lydia is the complete opposite of Emil. Even with their differences, the two end up being best friends until one day their differences become too much to handle and their friendship comes to a quick end.

Flash forward to the eve of their 25 year High School reunion. The duo are reunited and Lydia finds Emily still working to complete her parents work. When Lydia touches something she shouldn’t have, Lydia ends up gaining her own superpowers. The two now must team up to take on the “Miscreants” if they hope to stop them from wreaking even more havoc on the human world.

I wanted to like this movie more than I did. The trailer featured some of the best scenes in the movie, but I just didn’t find it as funny as I wanted to. I have found that with a lot of Falcone’s movies, the best scenes always seem to be featured in the trailer and aren’t as funny as one would want them to be. McCarthy’s Lydia was also too similar to some characters she had played in the past.

I will say, I did enjoy watching McCarthy and Spencer in scenes together. The two of them really were great alongside one another. Their characters couldn’t be more different, but watching them together easily explains why the characters are friends. The ladies are joined in the movie by Jason Bateman (The Crab), Bobby Cannavale (The King), Pom Klementieff (Laser), and Taylor Mosby (Tracy). Of the four, Mosby was the standout for me. Cannavale made for a decent villain while Bateman had a number of scenes with McCarthy that I thought were trying too hard to be funny. Klementieff’s Laser could have been left out of the movie all together and it wouldn’t have changed anything. Mosby brought a breath of fresh air to the movie.

Thunder Force is definitely not a movie I would rush to see on Netflix, but if you are looking for a new movie to check out and just have on in the background- this is it.

Grade: C+