Absolutely ridiculous, yet the best possible outcome

Rating: 7/10 (21 February 2018)

I don't know whether the comic book Thor is or has ever been popular, but its movie adaptation never stood much chance. It's simply impossible to make good cinema - which implies evolution and improvement - when your main theme revolves around almighty and technically unkillable gods which seem to be perfect by design. The first movie had the bonus of setting's and characters' freshness, but the sequel was basically a mess simply because the franchise hit the ceiling and started to suffocate.
What Ragnarok did to Thor is both a blasphemy and a revival. The almighty ones are still mighty enough for the show, but aren't quite omnipotent anymore. More to that, this movie has much less hero'ing and much, MUCH more goofiness. Director Taika Waititi basically splits it in two: the "typical Thor" stuff, with Asgardian theme, a serious villain and "true" confrontation, and the "comic relief" part which, from its neon disco start, was obvious to bear nothing but the ironic load - and that irony is exactly what makes Thor Ragnarok not merely watchable (which Dark World failed at) but even actually funny.
The difference between funny and fun is so subtle that some don't see it at all - but there is one and it's important. By breaking the rules and turning a superhero film into a sequence of "Thor and Loki walk into a bar"-like sketches, Ragnarok loses a clear point of view we could perceive it from. Should we still expect it to be coherent and consistent within its own rules? Or should we just let ourselves slide along the slapstick action because nothing is truly serious or important anymore? The film tries to cater to every side of this argument, but kinda ends sitting straight in between of two chairs, with no obvious failure but with a typical crack implying that its pants might've fallen a victim of the bold maneuver.
Call me old-fashioned and rigid, but, despite all the funny quirks, this film feels more like a filler intro for the upcoming Infinity Wars epic where Thor will probably make sense again. If we accept such purpose as worthy though, Ragnarok isn't bad at all. Had it taken any other road, and we would've ended with another dark and tedious drag filled with mumbo jumbo and long fighting scenes with gloomy faces. Luckily for us, the faces here are far from that (maybe far enough to call them goldblum'y), so let's learn to enjoy the little things and have fun while they still serve it, shall we?