THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS – MEDIOCRE FANTASY WITH A POSSIBLY SINISTER UNDERTONE

SHORT TAKE:

Mediocre fantasy, under utilizing what should have been a winning combination of Jack Black and Cate Blachett, with scenes which may just have some truly disturbing motivations behind them.

WHO SHOULD GO:

To be safe – adults only.

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LONG TAKE:

The House with a Clock in its Walls made me sad, but not in the way that movies are supposed to make you sad, like in Titanic, or Old Yeller, or at the end of Funny Girl.

Maybe it was because it wasn't nearly as good as I thought it was going to be, or maybe it was something more sinister. 

SPOILERS

The premise is of an orphaned boy, Lewis, who is sent to live with his only remaining relative, a reclusive eccentric uncle, Jonathan, (Jack Black), who, it turns out, is a warlock seeking a dangerous magical item, buried within the house, placed there by the house’s previous owner, Isaac, (Kyle MacLachlan). An interesting idea but not well carried out.

First off, there is the acting. I have liked Jack Black ever since he started doing kid and youth films. He is a goofy pleasure in movies like Kung Fu Panda, King Kong and Goosebumps. Cate Blanchett, who plays Jonathan's best friend and antagonist-neighbor Florence, brings an element of class to everything she's in, even the terrible Oceans 8. And of course Blanchett was spectacular as Galadriel in Lord of the Rings.

However the main character, Lewis, (Owen Vaccaro) was just plain old not very good. Perhaps it was the directing but, for example, when the subject of Lewis' parents' death in a car crash comes up, he tears up and wails so much and unexpectedly, it is as though he is faking it and we're all left waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He is unconvincing in other key moments as well, such as when he is supposed to be desperate enough for a friend that he would break his uncle's one rule about not going near a cabinet which contains a forbidden book. There was no effort to convince the audience that Lewis would want to risk his new relationship with his magical uncle.

Maybe it was the inconsistent characters. Lewis comes to the attention of a school favorite named Tarby (Sunny Suljic), who genuinely seems to want to be kind to this new little outcast. But then, suddenly, Tarby is running for a school office, and after getting elected, Tarby becomes a bully. One of the other kids tells Lewis they are not surprised because Tarby does this every election season. This doesn't make any sense because there is very little Tarby has to gain from the friendship with Lewis. 

This turnabout is so awkward, sudden and confusing that I thought, surely, there was more to this character. Is he possessed by the evil ghost of Isaac? IS he the evil Isaac in disguise, and was just using Lewis to gain access to the house? This latter theory seemed to be further encouraged by Tarby's instant and pointed desire to open the one cabinet in the house Lewis’ Uncle Jonathan told him he must never go near, as though Tarby knew all along the forbidden book was there. But no, Tarby is just a mean kid who likes to be nice randomly but only for a few days and serves as a convenient shoe-horned plot device. Sorry, but that's just bad writing.

Then there is Jonathan’s back story. Jonathan left home because he wished to pursue magic and simply assumed his little sister, Lewis' mother, did not want anything to do with him. So much so that Jonathan did not even go to her funeral. Yet without question Jonathan accepts that his sister would have sent her only child to live with him. These two points are inconsistent. Jonathan never has a real moment or explanation as to why he would be so deeply alienated with his sister. And no explanation as to why he would, without question, believe his sister would leave her only child in his care. Which is it? Did Jonathan believe his sister hated him or not?

The movie has so many misdirections, without purpose, that I got the feeling it was written backwards, with the ending in sight but little attention to making sure the path to it from the introduction made sense. And whenever the writer had to get from point A to Point B he just sewed on a patch to make the two plot points connect.

AND – OH YEAH – the clock turns out to be "under the boiler". I'm sorry, but in what universe does "under the boiler" put it therefore "— in the Walls"?

Also, I’m not sure what demographic audience they were going for. It’s silly enough that it should attract a young child crowd – fart jokes and Addams Family-like purple monster snake-tarantulas, standing up to bullies in middle school and ooh aah moments of solar systems coming to life in the living room.

But then there are extremely creepy scenes which would make the movie unacceptable for that same young group: poisoning evil anthropomorphized mannequins to death, violent repeated shaking preceding transformations much like the very disturbing way Penny-Wise the Clown shook in the modern It, a dead mother, (portrayed by Lorenza Izzo, now the estranged wife of the director Eli Roth) appearing in her son’s dreams to get him to seek out a forbidden book, necromancy, having truck with a forked tongued demon who actually licks blood off one of the character’s hands – basically a 7th book Harry Potter aimed at first Harry Potter book-aged children.

Then there is the more sinister aspect of the flaws.

There is an expression I learned in business: The Appearance of Impropriety. That is when, even if your motives are pure as a newborn baptized baby, there are just some things you should avoid doing. For example, whenever my husband drove our babysitters home, he would always tell our kids, "Come on! Let's all go for a ride!" and away a pack of them would go to keep the baby sitter company on the ride. He and I rightly believe that an adult male alone in a car with a young person not his own child is just not appropriate.

And, we do not much care for casinos in our community, so we boycott them. When a close friend held his daughter's wedding reception at one of the casinos’ restaurants, it was with great regret that we had to decline to attend the party. Had we gone, it would have seemed as though we were endorsing the casino. In both cases, we were avoiding The Appearance of Impropriety.

In The House, I am not saying that the character of Uncle Jonathan is doing anything wrong. He keeps his distance, had not sought out the child but was assigned the responsibility of raising his dead sister's son. But the writers left certain bread crumbs that perhaps it would have been better in the current environment not to have sown.

For example, near the end Jonathan is youthened to a baby but left with an adult head. This puts Lewis in a position of carrying around a naked adult in miniature. After Jonathan is restored, while hiding behind some equipment, he asks Lewis to throw him his pants, but more damningly, asks Lewis not to tell anyone that he, Jonathan, was left naked.

Given the circumstances, this is awkward at best. In the current climate of heightened awareness of an epidemic of underage inappropriate sexual predation by authority figures, this was, even in the best light, ill thought out and in very poor taste. Much like the scene in the dog movie Show Dogs, where an animal was coerced into allowing inappropriate touching for judging purposes, even if the circumstances made the behavior objectively understandable, this is not something you want to use as an example for children to follow. Moreover, as book stories are fantasy and so can be written any way the film makers want, there was ZERO reason to put in scenes where Lewis is carrying around a naked man OR to be sworn to secrecy by that same adult male concerning his nakedness in front of the child.

Even assigning innocent motives to the writers, these scenes smack of grooming for pedophiles and should be cut or re-written AS the makers of Show Dogs said they would do. (Though I have not personally confirmed whether or not they actually HAVE re-edited Show Dogs to eliminate or change the offending genital-touching/judging scenes).

Did the writer, Eric Kripke and director Eli Roth, deliberately set up scenes where a young boy is in a compromising situation with an adult male who swears him to secrecy in order to help desensitize millions of children to a similar real life scenario with far more corrupted, ugly and disgusting motives? Or was this just an ill-thought out, ignorant gag by Kripke and Roth, because neither, best I can find out, have any children so did not fully consider the implications?

I don’t really know. But, as I have inculcated to our own children a zillion times: I have never known anyone who regretted being too careful, but I have known a LOT of people who regretted not being careful enough.

What makes me sad, though, is that a movie which could have and should have been a somewhat fluffy entertainment must be analyzed in this way. Fifty years ago we could have easily attributed the innocent motives of the film makers at face value and shrugged off the possibility of any nefarious underlying motives – ALTHOUGH perhaps fifty years ago pedophia grooming could have been perpetrated in this way and we just would not have known to watch for it because its prevalence was not what it is today. Either way, the fact we live in a culture wherein it becomes necessary that even light fare today MUST be scrutinized so carefully in order to protect children makes me very sad.

So – while it’s fairly brainless amusement for adults, it might just be "Stranger Danger" level inappropriate for the kids – whether the film makers intended it to be or not.

OCEAN’S 8: THE EMPRESSES HAVE NO CLOTHES: DESPITE ALL THE PRAISE, IT IS A BAD MOVIE. HERE’S WHY.

SHORT TAKE:

The Empresses have no clothes. Not literally. But the only reason I can think it is receiving all its applause is because the cast is a bunch of women and it would be "politically incorrect" to do a fair review. Well, the poor male reviewers who are fearful of being labeled sexist may not want to say it, but I will. Ocean's 8 is a bad movie.

WARNING – MAJOR MAJOR SPOILERS AND ENDINGS – PICTURES AND DESCRIPTIONS – NOT ONLY OF OCEAN’S 8 BUT OF A NUMBER OF MOVIES OF THIS GENRE

You know, I was all set to like Ocean's 8. Never mind, as a rule, I don’t much care for the gender switching gimmick. I respect most of the work of the main actresses, really like a lot of the supporting cast, and enjoy this kind of complex Mission Impossible-type plot.

In the lead is Sandra Bullock (Debbie): as at home in comedy and drama as action adventure – Blind Side, Miss Congeniality, Speed, Gravity, While You Were Sleeping; even kid movies like Prince of Egypt and Minions.

Cate Blanchett (Lou) whose versatility allowed her to become immersed in the roles of Galadriel from The Lord of the Ring series, the German art curator from Monuments Men, an almost sympathetic stepmother in Branagh's Cinderella, Button's wife in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, appearances in off-oddities like Hot Fuzz and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Kevin Spacey’s insane wife in Shipping News, and Lady Gertrude Chilerton in The Ideal Husband.

Then there’s Helen Bonham Carter (Rose): from Ophelia in Gibson’s Hamlet to Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter series to Mrs. Thenardier in the musical Les Mis and the homicidal assistant in Sweeney Todd, a chimp in Burton’s Planet of the Apes, the fairy godmother in the same Branagh Cinderella mentioned above, the gentle Queen Elizabeth in The King’s Speech and the manic Red Queen in Burton’s Alice in Wonderland – her repertorie is breathtaking.

Anne Hathaway (Daphne), another incredibly versatile actress who was also in Les Mis, and Alice Through the Looking Glass, as well as Interstellar, Dark Knight Rises and Princess Diaries.

I’m starting to see a pattern. If I were to scatter the names of the main cast on a table and then draw a line between those who have worked together it would look like a spiderweb.

Then there’s the supporting cast including James Corden (John) (Dr. Who repeat guest appearance and voice of Peter Rabbit) who plays the adorably inquisitive and very smart insurance inspector, and Richard Armitage (Claude) (from Captain America villain to the heroic and noble King Under the Mountain, Thorin Oakenshield from The Hobbit) who plays Debbie's ex-boyfriend, and cameos from the likes of film veteran Elliott Gould reprising his previous role as Reuben from the male Ocean's versions, as well as Marlo Thomas, Dakota Fanning and Elizaberth Ashley.

I mean – what’s not to like?

Well, unfortunately, a lot.

Ocean's 8 women ………….

are unrelatably immoral, violate the rules of the thief protagonist movie to the detriment of the genre and…… hate men.

The premise is that Debbie (Sandra Bullock) is the sister of Danny Ocean (founding lead of the Ocean's franchise, played by George Clooney who only appears as a photo). She has followed in his footsteps, but five years previously she placed her trust and love with a man, Claude (Richard Armitage) who betrayed and sent her to jail. For the money, the challenge and revenge she sets up a heist of jewels on loan and display at the Met Gala, a real annual $30,000 per ticket event. She plans to steal MILLIONS worth of sparklies from the ample busom of Daphne (Anne Hathaway), which display had been intended to help fund the museum for the year. Amongst the thieves there are no orphanages to fund, no granny operations to pay for, no nuns to receive charity. These con-women want to pay for pointlessly bad movies, start fashion businesses with terrible designs, buy overpriced studio apartments or just speed off into the sunset on their motorcycle presumably to live the rest of their lives carefree. In other words – they will steal from a legitimate charity donated to by generous and well intentioned hard working people in order to engage in a lifetime of exhorbitant self indulgence.

Well, nice for them but what about the museum who will now have to account for the missing jewels in higher insurance premiums or perhaps the inability to get insurance at all? What about the taxpayers who no longer have the access to jewels they have paid to view, or the people whose jobs will likely now be forfeit or who will come under suspicion as a result of the disappearance and dismantling of the priceless historic finery. What's planned for the inevitable sequel? Cut up a Rembrandt into stamps in order to fund their respective future cocaine habits? And we are to applaud and sympathize with them as clever and daring just because they are………… women?????

Except for the ex-boyfriend, Claude, there was no indication that any of the collaterally damaged people deserved what happened or will happen to them in any way. And as Debbie is no better than Claude she has no real grounds to set him up either.

These women take advantage of others' virtues at every opportunity. Debbie manipulates the mercy of the parole board into letting her out even though she has been running cons while in prison. Tammy takes advantage of her poor unseen husband – lying to him and dumping the responsibilities of their home, children and family on to this unseen shlemiel so she can run off at a moment's notice to possibly end up in jail. All of them take advantage of the charity work of the museum, the generosity of the donors, the good will of Cartier, even the courtesy of the security guards assigned to the necklace. In return these people will get betrayal, retribution for their well intentioned mistakes, probably the loss of their careers, certainly the loss of reputation, loss of funds for the museum, the loss of irreplaceable works of art, AND the good will of us, the audience who are supposed to applaud the blatant vices of the characters in Ocean's 8.

In most movies that feature thieves as the protagonists, there are usually one of three outcomes or a combination: they die, they get caught, they are "innocent" because they do it for a believable and good reason/it's a trick and they are not guilty:

WARNING: BEYOND HERE BE MASSIVE ENDING SPOILERS TO CLASSIC MOVIES

CLICK ON ANY OF THE PICTURES TO GO TO AMAZON AND WATCH ANY OF THESE FAR SUPERIOR FILMS INSTEAD OF OCEAN'S 8. NETFLIX WOULD PROBABLY HAVE MOST OF THEM TOO IF YOU HAVE A SUBSCRIPTION BECAUSE MANY ARE OLDER.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – die in a hail of bullets courtesy of the Bolivian military

It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World – they all get physically pummeled by their own escape attempts, are caught, hospitalized, jailed and presumably will go to prison

Hell and High Water – they rob the banking insitution which robbed their widowed mother to get enough to rescue the family farm AND one of the brothers dies

The Italian Job – they are left, literally, hanging over a precipice with their fates uncertain – to this day, even unknown to the makers of the movie (they were going to make a sequel but it never happened)

  Dillinger – he dies

Bonnie and Clyde – they die

The Sting – they steal from an evil thug who murdered their friend

The original Ocean's movie – they steal from a shady casino owner, so they are taking money from a crook who got his money from idiots who voluntarily handed it over to him

White Heat – Jimmy Cagney's character goes out in a spectacular explosion

Gambit – Michael Caine's character reforms and gives up his ill gotten gain for the love of Shirley MacLaine's honest woman

The Usual Suspects – they all die

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels – they trade adventure and romance to already corrupted, venal, wealthy, and indulged women for money and jewels, Jamison will not take money from Christine when he finds out she is not rich, AND they are themselves tricked and humiliated

Godfather trilogy – Michael Corleone survives and is financially successful but lives long enough to see his family destroyed and his daughter murdered

Charade – Cary Grant really isn’t a thief

The Producers – Leo and Max are sent to prison EVEN though the victims are old rich ladies to whom Max gave adventure and even appear in court on his behalf

Psycho – well pretty much everybody in the solar system knows what happened to Janet Leigh's embezzling secretary in the shower

The point is that most movies respect the unspoken but usually acted upon moral code: Criminals who prey on those undeserving of being made impoverished should endure some kind of equivalent punishment.

Oceans 8 flagrantly violates this rule making the "protagonists" unappealing, unrelatable, and repugnant. Ocean's 8 not only allows the thieves to win but get to whisk away with property stolen from a charity – priceless historic jewelry art pieces which they dismantle to sell in pieces – and catastrophically destroy the lives of perfectly innocent men and women merely doing their jobs: museum curators, security guards, tax payers, not to mention the chilling effect such a robbery would have, not only on the attendance of guests for the next fund raiser, but for the participation of sponsors who would not want their items stolen.

These women, in short, do truly evil acts for trivial and completely selfish reasons……………… and we are supposed to root for them???

When the bad guys get "away" with a scheme it is supposed to be because they are stealing from other bad guys – like in Hell and High Water, OR because the marks are willing participants – as in The Producers. But not in Ocean's 8 where they not only steal from a CHARITY event but get away with it AND only to fund personal trite fantasies of their own.  Not even a token amount to a homeless shelter or hospital. Not even a "bone" to the S.P.C.A. (Geddit?..never mind.)

THEN – if this is not bad enough, Sandra Bullock's Debbie's worldview in this movie is very anti-male.

For example, in one scene Lou asks Debbie why she doesn't want to hire any men. Debbie says it's because men are noticed and women are not and for once she wants to be invisible. If this preposterous and thinly veiled misandristic excuse to even be slightly plausible in the real world, then this very movie wouldn't have been made. Women are very noticeable, occasionally for the wrong reasons, but they're certainly not invisible.

In the movie, if this were true, a key plot point would not have been possible. The entire heist heavily depends upon two highly trained very scary security guards being successfully stopped by a blond wigged German-speaking Debbie blocking their entrance to a woman's bathroom. In the real world there would have at least been one security WOMAN! Even without the part of the scheme where they poison Daphne she would have had to go to the bathroom at SOME point, right? I can't believe a capable security firm guarding a $150 million EXTREMELY portable necklace would have not thought of that. That's just stupid. But even assuming that oversight was made, these two men would have picked Debbie/faux German socialite up and shoved her through the door if necessary, and caught Constance in the act of lifting the necklace. After all, as the movie is written, the switch is not made until later and Daphne walks out of the bathroom without it on and the only other person in there had been Constance. It would have been kind of a no-brainer. Frisking Constance would have then been a simple matter for any trainnie cop much less a trained assassin and a member of the Russian security Force. Had the two security guards not – stopped at the behest of Debbie, and honored the sanctity of the women's bathroom, the Ocean's 8 would have been the Ocean's in prison.

On the one hand Debbie claims women are dismissible and in the next moment assumes she will be able to ward off burly and highly motivated security guards with the wave of her hand. Which is it?

Tammy is married in a nice house with two small children. Her husband is never seen but she is observed abandoning her children, literally driving away from her small child who asked if he could go with her. Engaging in fencing stolen goods out of her garage she claims her husband believes her flimsy excuse that she bought all of the items on e-bay. He must be either complicit or dumb as a bag of hammers.

Debbie is betrayed by the man she loved, Claude, so thinks she is justified in p***ing on a lot of people who had nothing to do with her troubles.

Lou is butch and given a vaguely lesbian personality but, ironically, is the ONLY one of the group who tries to include a qualified man in their group. Her advice is dismissed.

NONE of them, other than the abandoning mother Tammy, have a husband or home or children or any other family of note.

The manager of Cartier is easily swayed into making the unbelievably poor judgement call of lending out a necklace worth $150 million dollars to the moving target of Daphne at an event attended by hundreds of people, all because Rose tells him it will be good for Cartier's image among the young. Forget Debbie's crew. This kind of publicity and $150 million as bait would have attracted Alan Rickman's Hans' crew from Die Hard who, with a couple of stun grenades and some hostage taking could have easily taken control.

Every single one of the men in Ocean's 8 are: stupid, disloyal, greedy, easily manipulated, unreliable or – in a turn of breathtaking hypocrisy on the part of the screenwriter – made invisible.

The ONLY capable man in the movie is James Corden's John, an insurance investigator who is on to them immediately. His is the most believable thing in the movie – that a good insurance investigator would have been up their —- assets immediately. Especially since he has a history of catching members of this family. But then he meets with Debbie and agrees to get back ten WHOLE percent of what is left of the necklace in exchange for allowing Debbie to frame Claude, who John knows is innocent (at least of this crime). So the only honorable and decent man in the movie is corrupted.

Is the plot well written? Even for the preposterous Mission Impossible-type scheme that makes up this kind of movie – pretty so-so. There are major plot holes and parts of the plan which depended far too much on luck. There is the warding off the security guys with good looks and an attitude. There is also the point where they "find" the missing necklace in a fountain. This would have been an impossibility to even the casual observer. Daphne did not fall into the fountain or even stop to throw up in it. She raced striaght to the bathroom. The necklace is secured by a magnetic lock which would have had to have failed to come off her neck or it would have had to go over her head and the necklace circumference was far too small for that to be possible. But it is intact when found and security cameras would have shown she was at no time that near the fountain. So how did it get off of Daphne?

Is the acting good – given the talent involved – of course.

Is it a lot of fun to watch – yes, if you don’t think long or hard about it while you're watching.

So is it a good movie: No. Absolutely not.

Ocean's 8 is insulting to men in general, to our intelligence and to any sense of morality. While many of these women have, in the past, been in child- and family-friendly movies (Blind Side, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings), this is not one of them.

You'd be FAR better off spending your time pulling out an old classic like Mad Mad Mad Mad World or Charade or any one of the ones I listed above. Click on the pictures to go straight to Amazon to watch one of them instead of the insulting travesty that is Ocean's 8.

THOR: RAGNAROK – EXACTLY WHAT IT SHOULD BE

The wise and ancient Greek aphorism "Know thyself" which was said to hang in the forecourt at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi can apply to many things, even to movies. Movies of a particular genre are best when they adhere to the rules of their own known Universe. A romance should have long gazes and lovers who overcome obstacles. Horror movies should have jump scares. Disaster flicks should feature near misses and heroic self sacrifice. And movies based on comic books should bear the irreverent broad strokes of plot and illustration from which they originate.

Suffice it to say that Thor: Ragnarok understands its pedigree and is abundantly familiar with its own inner workings.

The premise, obvious from the title, is another in the line of adventures featuring Thor, Son of Odin and god of Thunder (Chris Hemsworth). Here he seeks to prevent the foretold, Ragnarok, the fiery destruction of Asgard, his home world.

SPOILER FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NOT SEEN THOR: THE DARK WORLD

Thor’s goal is complicated by Loki (Tom Hiddleson) who is hiding in the guise of Odin.

SPOILER FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NOT SEEN THE THOR: RAGNAROK TRAILERS

Thor is also hindered in his quest by Hela, the goddess of death, (Cate Blanchett) and by The Grand Master (Jeff Goldblum) who conscripts him into a gladiatorial competition against Hulk (Mark Ruiffalo).

This is a movie which THANKFULLY does NOT take itself too seriously. The colors are bright, the tale is full of creatures and fighting,    narrow escapes and changing alliances, spaceships, and the most unexpected cameos in the strangest places and characters which are WAAAAY over the top.

Jeff Goldblum’s Grand Master appears often as a hundred story hologram to his city which is imagined as the world’s biggest gameshow.

Hiddleson brings back Loki, the favorite Avenger Universe character one loves to hate in all of his snarky, clever, quipping, never-quite-absolutely-sure-what-he’s-going-to-do-next, ever so fun unpredictability. And every once in a while you get the feeling he is the only sensible adult in a room of idealistic children.

Anthony Hopkins reprises his role as Odin – first, in a comic turn, as Loki pretending to be Odin, then as the real Odin bringing to bear all of Hopkins’ Odin’s gentle dignity as a king and father.

Cate Blanchett’s Hela sports long dark hair which, when she brushes it back with her hands become enormous imposing deer antlers – a look, (much like Jason Isaacs’ ridiculously tall beaver hat adorning his Colonel Tavington in The Patriot), which only the likes of a great actor such as herself could sell as frightening.

As a side note, it is interesting to consider that Blanchett also played Galadriel, another extremely powerful supernatural being – the Queen Mother of the elves in Lord of the Rings who, when offered the Ring by Frodo gave a terrifying vision to Frodo should she accept:

"In the place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the Morn! Treacherous as the Seas! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth! All shall love me and despair!"

But who then musters heroic self restraint and refuses ownership of the treacherous Ring.

"I have passed the test. I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel. "

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeell just imagine if Galadriel had hungrily embraced the proffered ornament, eagerly put it on her finger, crushed Lord Sauron between her greedy fingers then you would get an idea of Hela – the flip side of Galadriel.

  And Blanchett has a Hela-va (think about it) good time munching on this role. She chews scenery, mows down soldiers, blows up castles and mews theatrically about being so very unappreciated in magnificent anti-hero finery. Hela is a worthy counterpoint to Thor’s beautifully strutting, splendidly self-aware position as the hero of the story.

But the story is not nearly as Wagernian as you might think, as characters, in very human fashion – make mistakes, trip, run into walls and annoy each other.

The screenwriters manage to run right up to that line in the sand between parody and affectionate homage and occasionally even plant one foot on either side. But they keep the ebb and flow between the comedy and genuine tragedy balanced as skillfully as a sword juggler at a PT Barnum circus.

Thor: Ragnarok is exactly what it should be: a live action comic book, brought to a gloriously larger than life by its director Taiha Waititi a New Zealand born child of both Maori and Jewish heritage, who also plays a wry rock monster gladiator named Korg.

Thor: Ragnarok is a perfect example of its kind. Like a two hour Disney ride it leaves you awash in eye-popping breath taking images, gentle humor which makes otherwise grandiose heroes familiar, and a plot which will carry you along like the Kali Rapids River Ride at Disneyworld. Thor: Ragnarok is, at turns, funny, heart-wrenching, heroic, endearing and ridiculous in only the way a comic book hero can come alive.

So grab your popcorn, turn your brain off and let Thor: Ragnarok take you on one of the most entertaining rides of the year. Had they been part of the same mythology, Thor: Ragnarok would have made Apollo proud.