Hardly a Marvel

Rating: 3/10 (10 March 2019)

God, I love Brie Larson. Loved her in Scott Pilgrim and absolutely agreed with her Oscar for Room. So what the bleep happened here?
It is hard to think back to the many, MANY superheroes of the past couple of decades to find a superhero SO plain, SO boring, SO shallow, SO lifeless and without a bit of soul or personality as Brie Larson's Captain Marvel. I had to check to see if George Lucas directed this, because I definitely saw the female Anakin Skywalker here.
She was so bad, or her character, at least, she took me completely out of the movie. I never once rooted for her, couldn't care less about her plight and frankly was just waiting for her to end up right where I knew she would thanks to the third Avengers movie. And that's sad, because the movie isn't necessarily a bad one...it's just the title character had none of that Marvel as suggested.
Erasing the bore, I loved how the movie was shot. Set in the mid-90s, it, of course, had a kick-ass 90s soundtrack (all of my favorites!!) and the familiar technology and stores from back then. But, bypassing that, the movie FELT like it was shot, edited, paced and scripted like it was from the 1990s. I totally felt transported back to my favorite decade and I praise this movie for that.
In a rather quick and easy to follow setup, we learn our title character wants to join an elite group of alien warriors hell-bent on stopping shapeshifters from destroying their protected worlds. Naturally, the one focused on in the movie is Earth and there, our "hero" has to track the shapeshifters with no other than Nick "call him" Fury.
Sadly, the movie is predictable from minute one and this is not just because it ties into many other MCU films. Normally, that would bother me, but again, the filmmaking all felt really 90s to me, so I'm pretty familiar with the old formulas.
Only a select handful of jokes landed, mostly from Sam Jackson and the special effects were good, not great. Too many of the older actors looked fake as younger versions of themselves. Despite that, it was so nice seeing Annette Bening again. It's been far too long.
I didn't hate the movie, but will only give it a VERY mild recommendation. If Captain Marvel/Brie Larson wasn't so incredibly and painfully dull, we would've had a MUCH BETTER Marvel outing. It even ended somewhat solidly for her, but not enough to make up for the previous 2-hours of sleepwalking she did.
***
Final thoughts: Admirable on the opening Marvel Logo and the 1st post-credit scene: totally worth it, especially since it's only 1-2 minutes into the 20-minute end credits. You can absolutely skip the last post-credit scene and just Google it when you get home.