For a second, I thought this movie title was the name of a ‘60s album by the band Spirit. The opening scene looked like a Yes album cover. A few of the fight scenes felt like an acid trip at a Jefferson Airplane concert at the Fillmore, with one of those groovy light shows. Perhaps if I would have been on some drug, this mess of a movie might have been enjoyable.
As I said in my review of Everything Everywhere All At Once – I’m burned out on multiverse stories. Especially ones like this that make very little sense.
I usually enjoy the superhero films, but I’m starting to feel like Martin Scorsese, who said they’re like theme parks, not cinema. He added, “they’re just not for me.”
And maybe they’re not for me anymore. I’m one of the few critics that was disappointed with the last Spider-Man and its multiverse story. And I hated Black Widow and The Eternals. I did love Shang-Chi, though, as well as the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse.
This story is weak, and it just felt like needless action sequences. The friend I brought with me to the screening went to the bathroom at one point. When he came back I was going to tell him what he missed, but…he just missed another fight scene, and I couldn’t even think what caused the melee.
Dr. Strange at one point splits a bus in two with his magic, spinning laser circle blades. Yet when a huge cyclop/octopus is attacking a city, he merely cuts off part of one of its legs? There were other fight scenes where Dr. Strange stops to say something to someone, and it’s detrimental. So even the fight scenes didn’t make sense.
Okay, I’ll try my best to explain the story. Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) has to go across multiverses because America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), who appeared to him in a dream, is in danger. She has the ability to jump universes (in each one, Dr. Strange hasn’t been able to save her), and the evil witch (Elizabeth Olson) wants to suck those abilities from her. Why does she want to do this? World domination? Nope. She liked a universe with two kids, where she can be a mom. My friend tried to explain to me that her character Wanda Maximoff was in WandaVision, and this was something I had feared: not watching all these TV shows might make me lost in the films I have to review.
In one universe where Strange is locked up, he has to answer to the Illuminati – a handful of smart superheroes who will decide his fate. A fanboy sitting behind me yelled with excitement at seeing who one of them was, and then a bit more excitement with the one that rolled in. I was more perplexed with the fact that an actor I enjoy – Michael Stuhlbarg – showed up at a wedding, had a few lines, and disappeared.
As much as I loved Wong (Benedict Wong) in Shang-Chi, he didn’t do much for me here. And I felt that Rachel McAdams was wasted. I would have liked to explore her relationship with Strange a bit more.
Mordo (Chiwetel Ojiofor) is also in this, and he gets involved in some of the action.
Sometimes, the special effects were fun, and gave a colorful, vibrant look to the various universes (one of the universes was merely paint, which some will think was a clever visual, I thought it was dumb). Other times, the CGI wasn’t impressive.
I’ve complained a lot lately about movies with one-dimensional characters, and this is another one of those times. While watching America Chavez running around screaming, I thought her character should have been given a bit more to do.
The jokes in this don’t work (aside from the final scene after the closing credits, which was hysterical). It seems like Strange was a bit more humorous in other films, but maybe I’m remembering that wrong. These superhero flicks don’t stick with me very long after I’ve seen them.
This movie also had a puking scene, because 82% of all movies made now have one.
This was directed by Sam Raimi (Spider-Man), and I dislike more of his movies than I like. He really dropped the ball with this, but then…maybe there’s only so much you can do with these second-string superhero characters, and stories that are all so similar when you know the good guys will prevail (one of Scorsese’s complaints).
The macguffins and exposition got old quick, and since I’m not a teenager, so did the monsters and fight scenes.
1 star out of 5.