I really wanted to say I liked this movie. When it started and for about the first twenty minutes, I was kind of grooving on the humor and the heart. But once the main plotline kicks in, all the air goes out of the sail and it just becomes another mediocre Melissa McCarthy star vehicle (or maybe better said: another Ben Falcone helmed McCarthy vehicle since her husband seems responsible for a lot of her bad flicks).

So Thunder Force is about a world infested with supervillains but no superheroes. A series of cosmic rays in the 80s bestowed only sociopaths with superpowers, it seems. McCarthy and Octavia Spencer play a couple of life long buddies who take an experimental drug they hope will create the first superheroes.

And, yeah, it’s largely a one joke movie but I like the casting and think that joke had potential. Certainly the setup where the ladies are played by younger actresses really does a good job of showing their friendship. And even when we get to see them as adults – one of them a genius scientist CEO of a tech firm and the other a Melissa McCarthy stereotype of herself – they have a certain (if familiar) charm.

But the rest of the movie needs to happen and rather quickly the bad improv kicks in and we get some pretty low budget, low effort superpowered fights that won’t impress anyone except a tight-fisted accountant.

But I will say that, as far as Ben Falcone helmed Melissa McCarthy vehicles goes, this is one of the better of a very bad bunch. It’s not completely an unfunny bore. I mean… that’s something, I guess? There’s some chuckles now again… and… I guess they leads are fine and the girl playing Spencer’s daughter is real charming.

Struggling to say positive things is never a good sign. This is mostly skippable unless you just have to see a movie with two overweight ladies playing budget superheroes. Or if you think that’s just inherently hilarious, I suppose.

Score: 73