'Thunder Force' Is a Super-Bore Directed by Ben Falcone
Starring Melissa McCarthy, Octavia Spencer, Jason Bateman, Bobby Cannavale, Pom Klementieff
Photo: Hopper Stone/Netflix
posited that "Melissa McCarthy's worst movies have something in common: her husband." At that point, McCarthy and her writer/director/actor spouse Ben Falcone had only collaborated on two films. A few years later, Thunder Force is the couple's fifth collaborative effort, and that damning insight stays accurate as ever.
Like
Tammy and Life of the Party,
Thunder Force is a vehicle for McCarthy to riff and vamp around in a half-assed kind of way. As Lydia, a blathering, beer-swilling, Van Halen-loving forklift driver, she's just hanging out in life, longing for the connection of former best friend Emily (Octavia Spencer), an ambitious geneticist who cut slacker Lydia out of her life to focus on her mission: developing the means of making ordinary people superheroes. This is in response to the rise of a race of genetically modified, sociopathic beings called Miscreants, who rage around the city blowing up buildings and knocking off liquor stores. At least, this is what we're told — by the credits, the movie only offers up two Miscreant characters. This kind of patched-together cheapness of premise and delivery prevails throughout.