Review of Blue Beetle (2023) by Infinitemonkeys — 04 Sep 2023

Almost everything is a mixed bag. The acting is mostly good, with Xolo doing a good job. At the other end of the spectrum is Susan Sarandon, over her skis in an ill-fitting role. In between the good and bad were a cast that seemed to be trying to channel Mexican Wrestling movie style of acting. I have to assume this was the director's fault as George Lopez and others can legit act.

Visually, the movie is interesting, and the action is not a jumble of explosions with nothing to catch the eye, but it's too heavy on the neon color palette. Thankfully, not Speed Racer level of Neon, but too much.

Which brings me to the lowest qualities of the movie. If I was 5 and loved popcorn, I would have been munching without blinking from start to finish. But, I'm not and so the movie was the most predictable, lazily-written movie of any genre I have seen in decades. It feels like someone plugged Blue Beetle into an AI using Story Wheel or Save the Cat and this is what was spit out. The humans who wrote it have nothing to be proud of as I was literally predicting every scene and outcome. I only failed to predict how bufoonish the behavior of the family was, or how incompetent the evil organization. Editing and some better character writing would have improved it tremendously.

I forced myself not to leave the theater, but even watching it on $4 ticket on National Cinema Day, I felt it was not worth the money.

I am happy it serves some audiences that needed better attention, but Blue Beetle deserved to be a film better than, say, The Phantom (1996).