Thunder Force A Hit, Or Miss?

Thunder Force

It's Friday and I'm stuck at home today. Like most of us this last year, I've become dependant on Netflix and the other streaming services to keep me from going nuts around the house. Truth be told, a week ago I was on the verge of kissing Netflix goodbye. A couple of announcements later and this gem of a comedy and I'm glad I didn't.

Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer are both two of my favorite female comedians in Hollywood today. Putting the two of them together is a recipe for comic gold.

Meeting in school, Lydia (McCarthy) and Emily (Spencer) become the best of friends as Lydia sticks up for the awkward, slightly bookish character Emily. Emily, the daughter of scientists who were killed because of the powered people "miscreants" is on a lifelong mission from childhood to make the world a better place and finish her parent's work. Like most kids, the two best friends forever end up going their separate ways only to be reunited years later.

Fast forward to their twenty-five-year high school reunion and Lydia goes to see her now famous and successful friend before bumbling her way into the middle of Emily's experiment. The two are thrust together by the circumstance of Lydia's bumbling when Lydia is forced to go on with the treatments to become a super, even though she was hesitant to cooperate.

"If you don't continue the injections, then before the weekends over, you might explode," says Emily.

Thirty-one days of training and undergoing the treatments, and abracadabra, they're superheroes.

The bumbling antics start from their very first mission, getting squeezed into a Lamborghini, before running down the streets of Chicago singing Glen Freys famous, Smugglers Blues. Their first adventure, stopping a heist, is less superman and more super "oh crap" moments as they learn to face the danger of the miscreants while flirting with The Crab (Jason Bateman).

Their biggest threat, Laser (Pom Klementieff of Guardians of The Galaxy), becomes a constant thorn in the two hero's sides as they prepare to go up against the local kingpin/crime boss running for mayor, The King (Bobby Cannavale).

Melissa Leo plays Allie, an ex-CIA agent who runs Emilys' offices for her. Much like her strength in her award-winning performances in movies like the fighter, she puts in an entertaining performance as Emily's second in the office and their assistant on Team Thunderforce.

Perhaps the best of the secondary stars, Taylor Mosby plays Emily's daughter. She portrays the fifteen-year-old college graduate and genius in a believable way while somehow tapping into the angst of teenagers. Meeting her mom's old childhood pal she gets' a long-awaited treat in Lydia as McCarthy is the much less mature, reserved, or boring adult of the two hero's. Being the teenage genius daughter of a gifted and driven scientist can't be easy. But, like any genius, she figures it out in the end.

With an entertainingly cute cast of supporting actors and actresses, the cast and crew bring together a funny romp through the superhero genre complete with incredible feets of strength, wildly imaginative superpowers, and bumbling bad guys that make scoring the win for the hero's an inevitability. The awkwardness of the fledgling romance between Batemans' The Crab and McCarthys' heroine had me laughing, admittedly at how ridiculous it looked. Somehow the two make it work in a way that's cutely entertaining, even though I might struggle not to picture the parts we're all bound to imagine.

Overall, I'd say this will no doubt make it to Netflix's top 10 most viewed list and it's one I'll watch again I'm sure. Especially if I need a laugh.