review: THOR LOVE AND THUNDER

Thor Love and Thunder is a lot like Shazam!  Schizophrenic and disjointed. It can't decide if it wants to be a Schumacher-esque superhero comedy like its predecessor, Thor Ragnarok, or a romance melodrama, or a sci-fi adventure, or a Guns N' Roses tribute film, or if it wants to make an anti-religion statement or a pro-religion statement or no statement at all.  All these different aspects don't blend together to make a cohesive whole. Instead it looks like scenes from different movies patched together. Curious is how the first Thor movie went out of its way to re-imagine Asgardians as Kryptonian like aliens rather than pagan gods. In contrast, this fourth movie embraces pagan mythology fully.  

The plot deals with Gorr wanting to kill all pagan gods, and ends up kidnapping all the children in New Asgard.  It's up to Thor, Valkyrie, Korg, and Jane Foster to rescue them.  Jane now has powers as she has stage 4 cancer, but an enchantment Thor unwittingly put on his uru hammer to protect Jane causes the hammer, which was smashed by Hela in the previous movie, to reassemble and give Jane super powers for as long as he holds it.  But a complication is that the hammer also weakens her human strength making her less receptive to cancer treatment. When Thor rescues the children, there is a Shazam like moment where he shares his power with all of them to help in battle.

Chris Hemsworth returns as Thor, perhaps the last survivor of the MCU's first phase, and still does well in the role in spite of the disjointed script. Natalie Portman, after missing Ragnorok, returns as Jane Foster and gives the film some gravitas. Tessa Thompson returns as Valkyrie but unlike her star turn in Ragnarock, in Love and Thunder she is just sort of there. Christian Bale as the villain Gorr seems to clash as his style of acting is fundamentally different than every one else in this movie. Although the trailers made it look like the Guardians of the Galaxy were co-stars of the movie, they only appear in the first 10 or 15 minutes. A highlight of the film is the ending where Thor and the little girl (played by Hemsworth's real life daughter) settle into a family situation. This movie has a few fun moments, but it's a far cry from what made Ragnarok feel like a fresh and new relaunch.