Justice League (2017)

Rating: 2/10 (12 July 2019)

Directed by Zack Snyder & Joss Whedon. Starring Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, Ezra Miller, Ray Fisher, Henry Cavill, Jeremy Irons, Amy Adams, Diane Lane, J.K. Simmons, Ciarán Hinds, Joe Morton. (PG-13)
Turgid time-waster aims to do for DC what the Avengers did for Marvel, but while Marvel's all-star smackdown was less a home run than a solid base hit to left, Justice League is simply a strikeout where the batter's pants fall down after missing the swing. While struggling to cram several new superheroes (as well as one of the most generic and forgettable villains to ever appear in a major comic book film) into a movie that runs less than two hours, the story is so rushed and fragmented that it often makes little sense, and it's a chore to even pretend to care about the film's raison d'être MacGuffin (boxes of power, or some such nonsense, a concept already done to death by Marvel, Transformers, and so on). Miller manages a few chuckles as the Flash, but his character rides name recognition only, and his hero-in-action sequences are just a rehash of Quicksilver's twaddle in the X-Men movies. Meanwhile, Affleck broods and grumbles halfheartedly, Gadot poses more than acts, Cavill cashes his paycheck, Momoa plays a gym rat version of the Little Merman, and so on. Even as a sensory-assaulting stew of eye candy, it fails to deliver excitement; it wouldn't have helped if the action had been directed/edited with more than the scintilla of skill on display here since the special effects are an ugly, cartoonish swamp. Much has been made of Cavill's rubbery alien mouth, but even more annoying is how literally half the film looks like cut scenes from a PS3 title. I wouldn't want to play such an uninspired mess of a video game; watching one on the sidelines is even more of a chore.
22/100