#39 BLUE BEETLE

 

Starring Xolo Maridueña, Adriana Barraza, Damián Alcázar, Elpidia Carrillo, Bruna Marquezine, Raoul Max Trujillo, Susan Sarandon and George Lopez. Written by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer and directed by Ángel Manuel Soto. Budget $104 million. Running time 127 minutes.

Based on a DC comic character that only hardcore comic fans will have heard of, this the latest effort from the DCEU and one of the last before DC desperately try and reboot the whole thing is played entirely as a comedy. With a wacky, Latino family as his comedy sidekicks our hero, Jamie Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) returns from college to find out his family are on their uppers, his dad's has survived a heart attack and lost his job, his sister has lost her job, they're all about to lose their house, his grannie is an ex-guerrilla and his uncle is a Stark level super genius inventor and computer wise. Meanwhile big (everybody hiss) baddie Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon) is about to unleash her OMAC army and has found a scarab thing from outer space that will help her. Luckily Victoria's niece Jenny has other ideas and gives Jamie the scarab which promptly turns him into an armoured all-powerful superhero. Then the baddies attack, Blue Beetle goes through a hilarious training montage, someone dies to give our hero motivation and the baddy's henchman gets transformed into a being equal and slightly better than our hero for the big bad act 3 punch-up. Then sprinkled with the hilarious Mexican family who lead a rescue mission to save Blue Beetle, an army of disposable thugs to be merrily murdered with impunity, and a funny old Mexican lady who relives her glory days killing innocents in the jungle by murdering henchmen.  

Somehow This film delighted critics because, get this, it's not as shit as DCEU last few efforts, Blank Adam, Shazam Furry Knobs and The Flash (although I quite liked that!).

Feeling like as if the whole thing had been filmed in the 1980s, this film is a remake of RoboCop 2 crossed with Iron Man 2 and feels like a lazy panto, Susan Sarandon is horribly wasted as a villain and stops short of twiddling her moustache. It leaves no stone unturned in its attempt to tick off so many Super Hero Cliches as possible and believe me it's almost as if the writer and director stopped watching movies after 1990. At no point in this film do the actual authorities in the guise of the police arrive to investigate the explosions, killings and gun battles that litter this film. The Baddies super secret device is stolen with such ease it's almost as if the whole thing is written as an overlong SNL skit. 

There is no explanation as to how our hero can fight or why the Blue Beetle scarab has chosen him, it just does. Luckily for him Jenny Kord's old dad who 'mysteriously disappeared' has left his daughter a Batman-like Bat cave filled with super power computer tech which our hilarious Latino Uncle can easily access and use, that is when he's not inventing portable EMP devices out of house hold junk. Every character in this shit fest is a tedious generic woke-approved cypher of a character, with a check list of acceptable social tropes used instead of back story. And every baddy a dreadful Caucasian out to exploit our plucky dirt-poor, but good, ethnically diverse but pure heroes.

I'm so sick to death of these incredible devices that are given to heroes with no noticable abilities that can generate mass from nothing, there's never any explanation as to how these things work and can we just decide now that along with the whole sky portal McGuffin that we should retire any nanotech suits which just appear out of nothing. 

I sat through this letting the whole thing just wash over me, little was I to know that it was going to be a long night as my second film was due to start mere moments after the end of this one. 

There are two post credit stings, one sets up an uneeded sequel and the other is just filler.

4/10