I, along with all people who value creativity and believe movies should be entertaining, have an urgent, desperate message for Melissa McCarthy: please stop agreeing to star in your husband’s movies.
Netflix’s new superhero “comedy” Thunder Force fizzles out fast and only gets worse. It’s the latest example of my above point, but this unfunny, boring, over-expensive mess of a movie ultimately fails because of it’s writer and director Ben Falcone.
Thunder Force lamely revolves around estranged school friends Lydia (McCarthy) and Emily (Octavia Spencer) who reunite as adults, after gaining superpowers, team up to save the city of Chicago from mutant bad guys. But the plot here takes less than half an hour of the run time; instead, let me tell you the real story:
Writer/Director Falcone is married to Emmy winner and Oscar nominee McCarthy, and this is their fifth collaboration since 2014. Every two years, Ben writes a script. Then he directs his wife in a comedic, starring role. And as time has gone on, their filmography together, instead of getting better, somehow gets worse.
Falcone has none of the qualities needed to be a good film director. But this sci-fi sideshow is really pandering to new lows even for him. Instead of super funny, all of the weird and thoughtless details Falcone chooses in this film are super weird.
Multiple scenes of McCarthy’s character Lydia gorge on raw chicken? Weird. The surprise 70s disco dance sequence? Weirder still. Super Lydia going on a date with an evil crab man and rubbing Old Bay spice on him before sex? Weirdest of all.
As both screenwriter and director, Falcone needs to be a leader. Thunder Force is the clearest evidence yet that he has no discipline in editing, no insight to comedic timing, no eye for closing plot holes, no interest in theme and clearest of all no vision beyond making movies as time wasters.
So much of the “comedy” is padded nonsense that would make an amateur stand-up comedian look hilarious. None of humour develops character, advances the story’s events, or gives us dramatic insight. The jokes are consistently random and unfunny.
An example? Half an hour in, McCarthy does an extended bit poorly impersonating Steve Urkel from Family Matters to a room of scientists appalled by her character’s antics. If you weren’t already appalled by this point, McCarthy repeating “Did I do that?” several times will make turn off the movie with all the thundering force you can muster.
What’s really disappointing is the A-list cast is being wasted on a garbage script, and four main characters are all women. An ensemble of female friends in STEM teaming up to be heroes is a great premise for a movie.
But instead of a neat idea, it’s just cutaway gags and unfunny nonsense. The rules of this world are even worse than January’s We Can Be Heroes, Netflix’s first attempt to cash in on Hollywood’s current superhero obsession.
Falcone and McCarthy are so sweet together when they do press events for their films - and they clearly support each other’s talents and love working together. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have collaborated on five movies together. But Ben, who cameos in all their films, is actually most talented (like his wife) as an actor!
I’m willing to give directors multiple chances, but after Tammy, The Boss, Life of the Party (which I gave an Oakville News thumbs down to in 2018), Superintelligence and now Thunder Force, I can say Ben Falcone is the worst mainstream director in Hollywood today.
Someone needs to force him away from the camera so he can try something else…and we, the audience, can be spared from his super bad movies.
Thunder Force
2 out of 10
PG, 1hr 47mins. Superhero Action Comedy.
Written and Directed by Ben Falcone.
Starring Melissa McCarthy, Octavia Spencer, Jason Bateman, Melissa Leo, Pom Klementieff and Bobby Cannavale.
Now streaming on Netflix for subscribers.
