Great special effects don't quite fill in the blanks SPOILER ALERT

Rating: 6/10 (21 May 2011)

As we left the theatre after seeing THOR, my dad remarked 'Gee, Anthony Hopkins must have really needed the work.' It was really the script that needed work. It ought to be a federal offense to cast a heavy-hitter like Anthony Hopkins and not give him the material to display his special magic – the nuance, depth and subtlety of which he is so capable (think 'Fracture' and 'Proof'), and which keeps him in my Top Ten list of all-time best actors. Just goes to show you that not even brilliant actors can save a mediocre script, although Hopkins (as Odin), Tom Hiddleston (as Loki), Idris Elba (as Heimdall the Gatekeeper), and Kat Dennings (as Darcy Lewis) excelled in their own roles. Chris Hemsworth's brash and testosterone-pickled Thor was kind of one-dimensional for the first hour (and when things got a little bogged down he took off his shirt, which helped with the tedium!), but his character gained momentum in the second half where the script finally allowed him to get some depth and emotion besides the football/caveman/kill da wabbit outlook, and he rose to the challenge very well. (Now, if we could see him do this kind of interesting acting without his shirt too, whew!). Unfortunately, just as Thor's character was becoming interesting, he got streamlined into a very predictable and ho-hum love story with Natalie Portman's Jane Foster; another underutilized talent, as was Rene Russo's Queen Frigga. All very talented actors who just didn't have enough material to make it fly. While I usually love director Kenneth Branagh's quirky, grandiose, no-holds-barred creative genius, for this film the multitude of dimensions, worlds and historical scope proved too much for one feature-length, and the stellar special effects were not enough to fill in the blanks of this story and keep it from fragmenting into tedium. Despite some very good performances, the whole was lesser than the sum of its parts.