Just to witness the awesomeness that is Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer sharing the same cinematic space, Thunder Force is worth your time. As a superhero comedy featuring an Oscar winner (Spencer) and an Oscar nominee (McCarthy), the Netflix film is also escapist fun.
What sets the film apart, in terms of establishing an emotive connection with our two protagonists, is how writer-director Ben Falcone (who is also McCarthy’s husband) starts his film back in the 80s as two girls become friends. Now, several things occur that will permeate throughout the remainder of the story. First, the idiosyncrasies of the two women that drew them together in the first place are revealed. Next, we get a ripe backstory for Spencer’s Emily Stanton and McCarthy’s Lydia Berman. Finally, and probably most importantly, the antagonists (in the form of The Miscreants) are revealed in terms of how they became what they are and why.
It is revealed that there were some strange supernatural phenomena back in the 80s that turned folks into super beings who have been wreaking havoc in the city of Chicago ever since. Soon after, a couple of geneticists who were working on ways to make humans “super” to combat The Miscreants, were murdered by them. Those were Stanton’s parents, leaving her to live with her Grandma Norma (Marcella Lowery). It also would serve as a catalyst for Stanton to dedicate her life to finishing her parents’ work and once and for all putting an end to The Miscreants’ reign of crime and terror.
When the ladies were in high school, they had a falling out because Berman’s fun-loving ways proved to be too much of a distraction for Stanton’s woman on a mission. Our story then picks up in the present-day with Stanton running a bio-genetic company on the cusp of the very dream her parents’ perished over, and Berman working as a forklift operator still living in the tough neighborhood where she grew up in.
Berman and Stanton will reunite and somehow, the former wound up getting the super-strength serum (through a comedy of errors that we could see coming from Mars—but still made us LOL) that the former had hoped to take herself. Stanton still is undergoing the treatment that will give her invisibility powers.
Together, they will be Thunder Force.
On the other side of the coin, we are first introduced to Laser (Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2’s Pom Klementieff)—whose powers should be obvious by her moniker, The Crab (Jason Bateman) and The King (Bobby Cannavale, who recently worked with Falcone and his wife, McCarthy, on last year’s Superintelligence). The latter is running for mayor and will stop at nothing to ensure victory. Cannavale plays him like a corrupt Chicago classic—a politician whose love of power is only eclipsed by his love of self.
McCarthy, doing her schtick, is often hilarious, all while Spencer is not solely playing the “straight man” to the Bridesmaids break-out. The Help star shows off her comedic chops as well, but let’s make something clear. This is a superhero comedy, and it embraces its genres in that order. The laughter comes more often early in the film than later, and that makes sense—as the stakes get higher, the comedic needs to take a back seat to the heroic. But that doesn’t mean the laughs stop.
Crafting a superhero comedy is one tough needle to thread and it is not without its pratfalls. Thunder Force has a legion of boxes to check on its way to a payoff. This has to occur, all while moving a story forward, massaging and further developing those inter-character relationships, making sure comedic moments and action sequences effectively intertwine as it all barrels towards a conclusion that one hopes is satisfactory for vested viewers.
Falcone surprisingly pulls it off for the most part. The man has been creatively building to this moment for some time. He made his directorial debut with his wife’s 2014 comedy Tammy. He followed that up with The Boss, Life of the Party, and the aforementioned Superintelligence. Each film progressively more polished than the one that came before. It feels as if it has all led to this, a superhero film with big set pieces and a cast that is a true ensemble—whereas his first film, for example, was mostly just his wife.
Falcone has also grown as a writer, having penned every single one of those films with McCarthy. This is the first flick where he is solely credited as the screenwriter. I’m sure his wife had some input, but this time out, she solely gets credit as star and producer. Not everything pans out, but the script itself is much more polished than his first three films combined. Superintelligence started to show off that prose power and it has come full fruition with Thunder Force. We wouldn’t be surprised if the word “franchise” is tossed around at Netflix in terms of the future of this Force.
Having an actress of Spencer’s talent set helps things immensely. McCarthy has a gift, for that there is no question. But there is something about Spencer that even a “bad” film—such as HBO Max’s The Witches of last year—is elevated simply from her gifts. Give her a premise such as Thunder Force, and something magical happens. Her character is an orphan who is driven by justice-centric retribution, talk about a meaty and deep soul to inhabit! She does it with her innate panache that never overwhelms, but commands, nevertheless. She makes those around her better and has for years. Experiencing her opposite McCarthy is a match made in casting heaven.
McCarthy does her thing, but it quickly becomes something unique to this film’s tone and tenor. Once her character evolves into a superhero, she is still the comedic timing champion, but there’s a sense of purpose that’s hardwired into her that was obliquely missing previously. The actress can turn on the improv better than anyone, but also has keenly learned to stick to the script when it is important to the overall arc of the story. In Thunder Force, she also does something incredible with Spencer. She humanizes her. I know what you’re thinking. “Humanizing Octavia Spencer?!” The Oscar winner is as talented as they come in her field, but there is something about her and McCarthy as a tandem that has Spencer playing looser and freer with her part and that has to be McCarthy’s doing as her scene partner.
Now, Thunder Force is not going to carry the same weight as an Avengers flick in terms of the superhero realm of things. It’s lighter on many, many levels. First of all, it is a comedy. But there’s more to it than that. Even the superhero element is one to not be taken all that seriously. I mean, just look at Bateman’s The Crab. Spider-Man was bitten by a radioactive spider and would inspire prose such as “with great power comes great responsibility.” Here, Bateman was bitten in the privates by a radioactive crab and now has crab arms where his human ones used to be previously. It makes even having a drink a challenge—yes, you guessed it… broken glass everywhere. In the hands of the comedic actor, it’s hilarious. But it illustrates the fact that even if the stakes seem high thanks to the writing of the script and the delivery of the ensemble, there’s still—what feels like—a wink at the audience with everything. Even McCarthy throwing a bus… just watch the film.
It is the escapist fun we all could use right about now.
Grade: B