'The Flash' movie review: A fan service that’s entertaining but not altogether satisfying

The Flash

Film: The Flash
Cast: Ezra Miller, Sasha Calle, Michael Shannon, Ron Livingston, Maribel Verdú, Kiersey Clemons, Antje Traue, Michael Keaton, Ian Loh, Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot
Director: Andy Muschietti
Rating: 3/5
Runtime: 144 mins

The much-awaited ‘The Flash' is a mixed experience at best. It has spectacle and blockbuster elements, glitzy action with a fair dose of comedy thrown in but its longish runtime, general incoherence, and inconsistent VFX keep frustrating you every once in a while.

Barry Allen's (Ezra Miller) attempts to save his family inadvertently alters the future several times. In one attempt he finds himself trapped in a reality in which General Zod (Michael Shannon) has returned and there are no Super Heroes to turn to. So he tries again and the narrative goes into a tailspin dishing out nostalgia trips and fan service with every DC comic superhero flashing through a ‘multiverse' in this very obvious attempt by Warner Bros to keep its ‘Justice League' potential top-of-mind.

The repetitive narrative resets with time and parallel universes bring ‘the butterfly effect' into focus and puts into question the very logic for Allen's attempt. It's clear from this narrative that ‘canonical' events from a person's life cannot be altered exclusively…and we've already experienced that in ‘Back to the Future' and ‘Superman.' Every attempt by Allen to alter the course of the past creates alterations in the entire history of the superhero universe. It certainly opens up a lot of possibilities for future films but are the fans going to be enthused enough for a whole new parallel verse of superhero franchises?

A much older, dissipated version of Burton's Batman, Michael Keaton gives the movie its most effective performance. His underplaying helps balance out some of the overdone performances and nostalgia send-ups that defy explanation.

There's also no doubting Andy Muschietti's creative genius and conceptual thoughtfulness but unfortunately, the film doesn't come together as a brilliant whole. The unstable cocktail of slapstick, drama, action, sci-fi, philosophy, and adventure creates a sort of manic chaos that is confusing to the audience. There are spectacular moments created by mind-blowing VFX but they are intermittent and far in between. The repurposed library footage from earlier adaptations (TV and films) of DC comics is not exactly artful. The DC universe also gets unrealistic CGI treatment in the unwieldy globe that highlights the perverse digital parade of IP branding within the alternate realities.

The Flash as the name suggests, has both flash and dash but the contrary storytelling, the clueless nostalgia trips, and the challenging arcs of spatial dominion create a confusion that's hard to unravel.