A Review of The Flash, Which is Not About a Girl Showing Her Titties as I Was Led to Believe
Posted two weeks later than intended, as evidenced by the first sentence, which starts
Well it’s the 4th of July, and I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m etc, etc, so I figure I’ll do the most American thing I can do and totter into my nearest megaplex, all white skin, red face, and blue balls, and fork over a couple thou to let waves of mindless superhero violence wash over me. Today’s feature was The Flash, one of the new offshoots of the DC (Dumb Cunt) Extended Universe in which, I gotta be honest, I don’t have the fucking foggiest what’s going on. It’s also the latest in an interminably long line of multiverse movies that try to walk a razor’s edge between clever and confusing and usually end up slicing their taints. The ads for The Flash seemed to be made entirely out of spoilers, though, so I had a pretty good idea that some sort of Mobius stripteasing timeline would have the main character meet an alternate universe version of himself, plus a mishmash of different movie franchises, kinda like if I got a Whopper, some McNuggets, and a Frosty for dinner. (Note to self on dinner). Anyway, so I’m all set and pleased as apple pie that the seat next to me is unoccupied and then WHIZ! BAM! the door flies open and I hit the deck cuz my mass shooty sense is tingling except instead in strolls the best looking and most oddly familiar guy I’ve ever seen and, oh fuck, it’s me from an alternate universe. Except this cocksucker is a super arrogant know-it-all crass-ass fuckface, misogynistic, sexist, prone to run-on sentences, and maybe borderline Autistic? Worst of all, he’s a talker, and barely shuts up for the entire movie.
“You know in my universe, DC is wayyy more popular than Marvel!”
So The Flash, played by Ezra Miller, is really Barry Allen, who’s a forensic scientist when he’s not Leo’s alter-ego in Catch Me If You Can, and he’s super fast on account of lightning, chemicals, and a very high carb diet. After an opening sequence of interrupting Ben Affleck’s Dunkin’ run for what seems like little more than an excuse for a Wonder Woman upskirt (not that I’m complaining) we also learn Barry’s hard at work on clearing the name of his father, played by Ron Livingston, who’s spent years in the clink after being (WRONGLY!) accused of stabbing Barry’s mom in the heart and then breaking up with her on a Post-it. Barry has a great moment where he explains to a Black journalist that the justice system is sometimes unfair. Never really investigated is how Ron Livingston ever landed sexy Latina (sry, Latinx) Maribel Verdú (a woman so hot she successfully persuaded Y tu mamá también’s Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna to blow each other!) in the first place, but her absence has left a big milfy hole in the heart of Ezra (sry, Ezrx), and so Barry develops a plan to utilize the most convenient parts of Einsteinian physics while disregarding the rest in order to travel faster than the speed of light while I guess Lorentzian contracting his dick (?) so he can go back in time to prevent the whole knife in his mom’s very ample chest thing from ever happening. Basically.
“In my universe Y tu mamá también is all chicks!”
Of course a student of ANY TIME TRAVEL MOVIE EVER knows the perils of such an endeavor, first and foremost being interacting with a younger, dipshittier version of oneself and thus giving the spacetime continuum a hernia, which Barry does almost immediately, because what’s Better Than Ezra? Two Ezras! (Sry, Ezri) Increasingly, this multiverse shit is used to retcon old movie properties, and some of the more fun parts of The Flash deal with this slice-and-dice spot-the-reference geek-pleasing, which allows, for example, Eric Stoltz to fulfill his Marty McFly destiny and Biff Tannen to prolly crush Hillary in 2016. Who knows, maybe Christopher Reeves will walk again… One of the movie’s quieter in-jokes has Barry escaping through a wall adorned by a Raquel Welch poster, presumably to rendezvous with Tim Robbins in Zihuatanejo.
The look of the movie is fine/passable/kinda shitty. It’s wall-to-wall special effects, which is to be expected, and I counted, no exaggeration, about 500 visual effects artists in the credits. So why, then, does the movie volley between some pretty sweet CGI when Ezra’s all like “Flash On!” or whatever, and some truly ghastly CGI when pretty much anything else is happening? A sequence involving a bunch of babies was particularly hideous until I remembered that babies really are that ugly. Idk how pedophiles do it.
“You mean like when Woody Allen proved that Mia Farrow molested all those kids??”
Speaking of pedophiles, Ezra Miller carries the movie, (mostly) snatching the script back to pathos whenever it’s veering dangerously close to full-on milftastic bathos, and playing the different levels of maturity in the two Barrys nicely. Prolly the best casting job in the whole of the DCEU, Margot Robbie’s ass notwithstanding. One can imagine Miller landing the plum role, popping the gag-ball back into their lover victim houseguest’s mouth, finger to lips, “Shhhh, it’s my agent.”
The time fuckery also allows for the introduction of two “new” characters to the DCEU. Coach/Player Michael Keaton is Batman, and despite practically wearing a sign that says Nostalgia Money (known as a “Bruce Banner”), he plays the role to the hilt, flip-flopped, long-haired, piss-in-jars, one cave housing the Batwing and another housing the Spruce Goose. Also on board is Superman’s cousin, played by a pair of lips with a girl behind them. A quick internet search says she was plucked from the cast of The Young and the Restless. Ezra said “You had me at Young.”
Anyway, the plot is fine and all, but hasn’t this multiverse cum swapping run its course? Haven’t I already seen Far From Everything Everywhere All Across the WandaStrange? Can I jump into a universe where TOTALLY STABLE studios like Warner Bros aren’t transparently repackaging former hits into modern day pleasantries? A universe where the Well of Originality isn’t as desiccated as Maribel Verdú’s dead pussy??
“In my universe Cate Blanchett won Best Actress for Tár and Michelle Yeoh won Best Cinematography for Rust.”
So honestly the movie wasn’t terrible, but if I never see it again, no harm no foul. To spare you the excruciating trawl through SFX Artist Land, the credits were followed by a scene of Jason Momoa not quite drunk enough to beat Lisa Bonet when he gets home, but you know it’s coming. The End.
“You know it’s not gay if we do it to each other.”