Cinema 2011 #43: Thor

Thor’s a homo.

That’s pretty much the entire referencing point I had when it came to this, the latest installment in Marvel’s efforts to pull off the ultimate spectacle in superheroics and 3D derring-do. A 1987 Elisabeth Shue starring teen-flick favoured by my sister, Adventures in Babysitting. Well, that and a loose recollection of Norse mythology and its mead-chugging Viking warrior frat-boys after-living it up in Valhalla. Perhaps that is why I viewed Thor as the big gamble in Marvel’s mix, as convincing an audience, much grounded in pseudo-scientific superhero lore and post Dark Knight gritty realism, that a magical God from a non-Christian heaven could end up on Earth, fighting off baddies with a bewitched hammer named Mjolnir, is a pretty big feat. Throw into the mix a lead actor best known in these islands for playing the buff fella with a girl's name on Home & Away, a director famed for his Shakespearian roots and a film languishing in developmental Niflheim for years, and you get Thor. And by Odin’s beard, this god of thunder arrives with a bang.

The film tells the story of Thor, the Norse deity and crown prince of Asgard, whose father Odin is none too pleased with his offspring’s devil-may-care brawling and foolhardy antics. When Thor and his sidekicks go one step too far, causing an intracosmos war with the Jack Frost giants of Jotunheim, Odin, played with voiciferous gusto by Anthony Hopkins, banishes him to Earth. Separated from his godlike goodies (hammer and powers) until he can learn the humility to be a just and righteous leader, Thor becomes a bumbling, and genuinely funny, fish out of water when slumming it with us mere mortals. Luckily, he catches up with Natalie Portman’s Jane, an astrophysicist whose research has caught the eyes of secretive organization S.H.I.E.L.D. (the glue holding this sprawling superhero scrapbook together), who aims to help him out. And help he needs, as up in the heavens, brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) starts to sow seeds of dissent in an effort to bag the thrown.

Cinema 2011 #38: Your Highness

Comedy is hard. There’s no denying it, really. What one person finds funny another finds banal. Or excruciating. Or boring. It’s easy to be dramatic, to scare and to thrill. But raising a chuckle, well easier said than done. 2011 hasn’t been a year of belly laughs, and while we’re only a third through this season’s cinematic selection, the likes of Love & Other Drugs and Gulliver’s Travels have been seriously lacking in lols, while the pedigree heritage of Paul failed to make it best-in-show. If anything, the computer-animated movie is fast becoming the de facto funny, but has yet to cater to a specifically adult audience. To that end comes Your Highness, the latest offering from the creative team behind such bawdy blockbusters as Pineapple Express and Superbad, and has its sights set on lampooning the 80s fantasy movie. With drugs. And boobies. And paedophiles. And I wanted it to be so much better.

This time round, the story revolves around prodigal prince Thaddeus, played by Danny McBride. He’s the younger brother to the far superior Fabious, which is a rather fitting name for James Franco, the (and I’m quoting directly the back-page blurb of his recent collection of short stories, Palo Alto) modern-day Renaissance Man. Anyway, Fabious bags a babe (a very fun Zooey Deschanel), but she’s kidnapped by villainous Leezar, and the two brothers embark upon a quest for Fabious to find his one true love, and for Thaddeus to find himself. Natalie Portman shows up as a Xena-esque warrior maiden, there are McGuffins to find and baddies to best. And lots of puns and innuendo to boot.