Exit through the gift shop

Rating: 8/10 (7 November 2016)

Doctor Strange's tagline is as much plea as catchphrase: "Forget what you think you know." It's appropriate, given Marvel's fourteenth film subjects a smarmy, goateed playboy not at all unlike Tony Stark to a Batman Begins style Tibetan training montage, wherein he conjures landscape-folding magic(??) suspiciously reminiscent of Inception. Hmm. Still, by now it should come as no surprise that the studio who has made mega-blockbusters out of Norse gods, propaganda figureheads, and an anthropomorphic alien tree and sass-talking raccoon are used to being one step ahead of audience skepticism. And by the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth, they've done it again: Doctor Strange is exactly the wacky, winking dose of pixie dust needed to breathe vibrancy and psychedelia into keeping the Marvel formula if not quite Strange, at least not yet stale. Which, for round fourteen, should be considered nothing shy of magic.
Granted, Strange's story is anything but. There's no doubt that its central trope of arrogant, unlikely hero called upon to save the world treads perilously over-familiar ground, and the maddening speed and convenience by which Strange is accepted into his mysterious Sanctum and masters the mystic arts doesn't help. Still, director Scott Derrickson handles proceedings with consummate zest and bounce, navigating the potential disjuncture between cliché narrative and ludicrous occult conceit with such nimble humour (for every "Eye of Agomotto" and "Wand of Wattomb" there's a surprisingly witty Beyoncé gag. Yes, that's not a sentence you hear every day), including some pristine, tongue-in-cheek jabs at shallow Western appropriation of Eastern theology, that it all, astonishingly, feels breezy and effortless. It's a deliberately simple cinematic apéritif bridging the Big Important Movie Events of Civil War and the upcoming Infinity War (including the most slyly unceremonious Infinity Stone drop yet). And it's all the more enjoyable in its inauspiciousness.
This is not to say that Derrickson's conjurations are purely frivolity. He may rush Strange's inevitable rise to mysticism and heroism, but dwells extensively on the car accident (don't text and drive, kids!) that costs him his hands and superstar surgery career, and his agonizingly fruitless recovery process, crafting a disability allegory as poignant and heartfelt as Iron Man's. Even more notably, Derrickson doesn't squander his unprecedented opportunity to deliver the first genuinely weird multi-million dollar superhero blockbuster, and practically salivates through the requisite exposition sequences waiting to flood the screen with Steve Ditko surrealism. Without mincing words, Doctor Strange is a visual masterpiece, and the first superhero blockbuster to really showcase every scrap of its budget on screen. Strange's first plunge into the infinitely refracting multiverse is a no-holds-barred plunge into surrealism porn, like perusing a bismuth crystal from the inside of an astrophysical kaleidoscope on a roller coaster. It's a shock of genuinely mind-bending big budget wizardry - think Salvador Dalí directing an Audi commercial - and it's spectacular.
Although the film never really matches this first trip (probably wise, lest audiences start sinking through their seats into a pinwheel of endlessly undulating Thanos pupils), Derrickson weaves each action set-piece with similar insanity, making for some of the most visually inventive cinematic combat in recent memory. Landscapes bend, contort, and fold inwards like interlocking M.C. Escher gears, as Strange and his arcane compatriots unleash the powers of gravity, space, and time against each other amidst magic beat downs like laser-light tai chi, or projecting their 'Astral selves' into intangible brawls, while Strange's sentient 'cloak of levitation' borrows copious surreal slapstick from Aladdin's magic carpet, and is just as riotous. Michael Giacchino's musical score accentuates this familiar oddness, folding familiar hero leitmotifs into a sumptuous sonic burrito of harpsichord, sitar, and electric guitar plucking, like a Pink Floyd b-side (and don't worry - they show up too). And just when it looks like it might all be lost amidst another generic Marvel 'CGI blob blowout' climax, Derrickson deftly sidesteps the cliché, replacing the Doctor's boss battle with arch foe Dormammu (here a gigantic, spectral Thanos clone instead of his traditional flame-head self, disappointingly) with a weaponized Groundhog Day. And there you have it. Inception-Schminception.
No one sensible would've doubted the casting of Benedict Cumberbatch as the Sorcerer Supreme - who else could be magnetically weird enough to twist such otherworldly, spiritual gravitas and mouthfuls of nonsense words into something feasibly accessible? He's inevitably stupendous, but still a genuine revelation in how funny he is, his sardonic charisma spilling over the expanses of the screen. Yet, he's also acutely human - arrogant, sorrowful, regretful, Cumberbatch paints Strange's emotional arc so strikingly that it's surprisingly easy to buy his slide into devoting his life to protecting a mystical dimension his medical mind can scarcely accept the existence of. Tilda Swinton's Ancient One is appropriately bonkers, exhibiting perfectly cavalier comedic timing, and somehow more imposing and disquieting by adopting a perennial glazed, chipper smile, which pierces right to the soul. The rest of the supporting cast are given somewhat short shrift in terms of moments to shine - Chiwetel Ejiofor's (not yet Baron) Mordo is promisingly brooding with just a dash of unhinged, but bereft of sufficient characterization to hype his pending villainy, while Rachel McAdams outperforms her token love interest plot device, exhibiting unexpectedly credible emotions without overstaying her welcome. Mads Mikkelsen suffers the most, stranded with one of the blander MCU fanatic-du-jour. Still, the delightfully deadpan Benedict Wong steals scenes and laughs aplenty as bone-dry librarian-turned-confidant Wong.
Neatly inverting reservations with a sparkling wit, dazzling action, and hallucinatory gorgeousness, Doctor Strange may not reinvent the Marvel wheel, but it certainly transfigures it into a neo-cubist, inverted flying carpet for a spell (ha). Anchored by Cumberbatch's spectacular charisma, and some pleasant tweaks to the formula, Marvel's fourteenth may not be particularly unexpected, but it's undeniably one of their most spirited, and, certainly, Strange. Now exit through the gift shop of contorted, Escher/Dalí action figures. And softly rap a bar of Eminem. For Wong.
-8.5/10