Thunder Force (2021)

April 9, 2021 11:00 AM

In a world where supervillains are commonplace, two estranged childhood best friends reunite after one devises a treatment that gives them powers to protect their city.
posted by ellieBOA (9 comments total)

This was entertaining. Nothing groundbreaking — it does exactly what you'd expect — but it was easy to watch.

Except for the raw chicken stuff. UGH.
posted by jonathanhughes at 7:33 PM on April 9, 2021

A few ok gags/ lines but the vast majority of the writing fell flat.

The cast is good, but ill used.
posted by porpoise at 7:48 PM on April 9, 2021

I thought the casting for young Melissa McCarthy was especially good.
posted by oh yeah! at 4:20 AM on April 10, 2021 [1 favorite]

Slate: Melissa McCarthy, Please Stop Making Bad Movies With Your Husband
posted by ShooBoo at 9:25 AM on April 10, 2021 [4 favorites]

I think McCarthy and her husband have cracked the code on something Hollywood has been trying to figure out for at least fifteen years: how to make star-driven, mid-budget, crowd pleasing, funny/stupid movies like the ones that played at the multiplex most weekends between 1984-1993.

This is not a good movie, but many of the people you know will enjoy it immensely before forgetting about it entirely. Kids too young to see the hackery, worn-out olds who miss this particular strain of (harmless, sorta fun) hackery, and people who because of [gestures broadly at everything] need a laugh may consider this time well-spent.

I think they were hoping it would be a peer to the likes of Ghostbusters. It is not. But is probably as funny as Ghostbusters 2, so if you are as fond of Melissa McCarthy, Octavia Spencer, and Jason Bateman as you were Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, and Sigourney Weaver, then saddle up and have some fun.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:01 PM on April 10, 2021

Yeah, I finished and immediately wished I had watched The Heat instead. (Spy is even better, but everyone wants to watch Spy so I've seen it at least a dozen times.)

Gotta be honest...the raw chicken was the only bit I really laughed at. I was also weirdly annoyed that they made Octavia Spencer character into a Tony Stark type without leaning on the mundane superpower of being really, really rich. It took a while for me to understand that they weren't even superheroing incognito. (Right? Er, right?)
posted by grandiloquiet at 4:30 PM on April 10, 2021

This felt like it was stuck between being a soft family comedy and a supremely weird body horror comedy. I kinda wish it had leaned in on either one. There was just a little too much gooey delicious detail when those crab pincers got ripped off.
posted by M Edward at 3:03 PM on April 14, 2021

Well, that was the proverbial land of contrasts. There were jokes that fell flat, and jokes that were stretched way out past the funny point (the daughter looks like Urkel, but is too young to know who Urkel is, we get that, can we move on now please), and some stuff that made less than zero sense (the supervillain trying to take over the city secretly decides to openly bust into the HQ of the rich superhero who no doubt has security cameras all over the place to monologue because... why, exactly?), but there was enough fun stuff to carry it, mostly, although at just over an hour in I was starting to wonder if I really wanted to finish it. Bobby Cannavale and Pom Klementieff have both been funnier in funnier superhero movies (Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, respectively), but Jason Bateman was fine.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:57 PM on April 17, 2021

I thought this was fine - not hilarious but not awful either. I did like that it was a bunch of female leads who were not fighting over men or being portrayed as catty and backstabbing. The raw chicken on the other hand...I'm gagging again just thinking about it.
posted by Sabby at 6:33 PM on April 30, 2021