Review: ‘Thunder Force’ Is Forced and Lacking Any Thunder

This image released by Netflix shows Melissa McCarthy, left, and Octavia Spencer in a scene from the comedy "Thunder Force." (Netflix via AP)
This image released by Netflix shows Melissa McCarthy, left, and Octavia Spencer in a scene from the comedy "Thunder Force." (Netflix via AP)
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Review: ‘Thunder Force’ Is Forced and Lacking Any Thunder

This image released by Netflix shows Melissa McCarthy, left, and Octavia Spencer in a scene from the comedy "Thunder Force." (Netflix via AP)
This image released by Netflix shows Melissa McCarthy, left, and Octavia Spencer in a scene from the comedy "Thunder Force." (Netflix via AP)

Melissa McCarthy and her husband, filmmaker Ben Falcone, have managed to put out not one but two movies during this global pandemic. It prompts two questions: What did we do to deserve them? And how do we stop it?

McCarthy enlists — and immediately wastes — the services of Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer for the superhero buddy comedy “Thunder Force,” a meandering nothingburger of a film.

It’s the fifth team-up between McCarthy and Falcone — they previously did “The Boss,” “Tammy,” “Life of the Party” and “Superintelligence.” It’s clear they’ve gotten progressively worse and McCarthy’s welcome manic, anarchic energy is no longer disarming.

This time around, McCarthy and Spencer play two middle-aged friends who become superheroes after one invents a formula that gives ordinary people superpowers. We’d settle for a formula that makes this film work.

This premise offers the filmmakers the chance to send-up superhero films, but “Thunder Force” mostly just apes them with alarming slackness. It’s corny when it needs to be edgy and stupid when it needs to be clever.

The movie starts in the 1980s as we are introduced to the two girls in high school — Emily is smart and sensible, while Lydia is messy and impulsive. (McCarthy and Falcone’s own daughter, Vivian, plays a younger McCarthy). Emily wants to grow up to be a geneticist. A “lady part doctor?” asks Lydia. Emily responds: “That’s a gynecologist.”

Flash forward to the two as adults. Emily has become a tech millionaire and Lydia a beer-swilling loser still wearing hair-band T-shirts and drinking expired milk.

In this alternative universe, mysterious cosmic rays have turned some humans into super criminals called Miscreants, led by a slumming Bobby Cannavale. Emily vows to stop them by creating her own superhero juice that will offer super strength and invisibility. Unfortunately, Lydia accidently gets the strength formula.

Cue the montage of McCarthey’s Lydia lifting 20,000 pounds, making 14-foot vertical jumps and pulling a tractor-trailer. Together, Emily and Lydia are Thunder Force. “Let’s get swole and kick some Miscreant butt,” McCartney says.

Along the way, such bizarre and genuinely funny bits are offered about Glenn Frey, Urkel, Jodi Foster, “The Super Bowl Shuffle” and Seal. And Jason Bateman, McCarthy’s “Identity Thief” co-star, plays a Miscreant with crab claws for arms and is so consistently funny that you’ll wish he had his own film. “What’s his power? Tasting delicious with melted butter?” McCarthy jokes.

This film was in the can before the death of George Floyd and there are a few sour notes, as when a goon is excessively tasered until his skin burns while Emily asks a bystander not to film it on his phone. (“Oh, that’s messed up,” says the store clerk. You bet.) And having a Black woman with the skill of turning invisible in 2021 comes off as a sour note.

But to have two middle-aged, actors scrap with bad guys is a treat, even if scenes of them huffing and puffing as they squeeze into a tiny purple Lamborghini is played for laughs a little too long.

There’s also the theme of two women who are complete opposites somehow managing to complement each other and learning to appreciate what the other offers to their friendship.

“Sometimes I don’t know if I’m mad at you because you always go crazy or if I’m really just mad at myself because I never do,” says Spencer’s Emily.

But that’s just putting makeup on a crustacean: The trailer for the film is way better than sitting through it. It’s a tedious mess to endure and seemed like way more fun making than watching.



‘The Osbournes’ Changed Ozzy’s Image from Grisly to Cuddly, and Changed Reality TV 

Metal-rock star Ozzy Osbourne holds a replica of his new star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as he poses with his family during a ceremony on April 12, 2002, in Los Angeles. Pictured with Osbourne, from left, are Aimee, Sharon, Kelly, Jack and Louis. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)
Metal-rock star Ozzy Osbourne holds a replica of his new star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as he poses with his family during a ceremony on April 12, 2002, in Los Angeles. Pictured with Osbourne, from left, are Aimee, Sharon, Kelly, Jack and Louis. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)
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‘The Osbournes’ Changed Ozzy’s Image from Grisly to Cuddly, and Changed Reality TV 

Metal-rock star Ozzy Osbourne holds a replica of his new star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as he poses with his family during a ceremony on April 12, 2002, in Los Angeles. Pictured with Osbourne, from left, are Aimee, Sharon, Kelly, Jack and Louis. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)
Metal-rock star Ozzy Osbourne holds a replica of his new star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as he poses with his family during a ceremony on April 12, 2002, in Los Angeles. Pictured with Osbourne, from left, are Aimee, Sharon, Kelly, Jack and Louis. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)

There was Ozzy before "The Osbournes" and Ozzy after "The Osbournes."

For much of his life, the Black Sabbath founder and legendary heavy metal frontman who died at 76 on Tuesday was known to much of the public as a dark purveyor of deeds.

Wild stories followed him. Clergy condemned him. Parents sued him.

But with the debut of his family reality show on MTV, the world learned what those who'd been paying closer attention already knew: Ozzy Osbourne was soft and fuzzy under the darkness.

During its relatively short run from 2002 to 2005, "The Osbournes" became a runaway hit and made stars of his wife Sharon and kids Jack and Kelly. But more than that, it made a star of the domesticated version of Ozzy Osbourne, and in the process changed reality TV.

In 2025, when virtually every variety of celebrity has had a reality show, it's hard to see what a novelty the series was. MTV sold it as television's first "reality sitcom."

"Just the idea of the Black Sabbath founder, who will forever be known for biting the head off a bat during a 1982 concert, as a family man seems strange," Associated Press Media Writer David Bauder wrote on the eve of "The Osbournes" premiere. But on the show, Osbourne was "sweetly funny — and under everything a lot like the put-upon dads you’ve been seeing in television sitcoms for generations."

Danny Deraney, a publicist who worked with Osbourne and was a lifelong fan, said of the show, "You saw some guy who was curious. You saw some guy who was being funny. You just saw pretty much the real thing."

"He’s not the guy that everyone associates with the ‘Prince of Darkness’ and all this craziness," Deraney said. "And people loved him. He became so affable to so many people because of that show. As metal fans, we knew it. We knew that’s who he was. But now everyone knew."

Reality shows at the time, especially the popular competition shows like "Survivor," thrived on heightened circumstances. For "The Osbournes," no stakes were too low.

They sat on the couch. They ate dinner. The now-sober Ozzy sipped Diet Cokes, and urged his kids not to indulge in alcohol or drugs when they went out. He struggled to find the History Channel on his satellite TV. They feuded with the neighbors because, of all things, their loud music was driving the Osbournes crazy.

"You were seeing this really fascinating, appealing, bizarre tension between the public persona of a celebrity and their mundane experiences at home," said Kathryn VanArendonk, a critic for Vulture and New York Magazine.

The sitcom tone was apparent from its first moments.

"You turn on this show and you get this like little jazzy cover theme song of the song ‘Crazy Train,’ and there’s all these bright colors and fancy editing, and we just got to see this like totally 180-degree different side of Ozzy which was just surprising and incredible to watch," said Nick Caruso, staff editor at TVLine.

Like family sitcoms, the affection its leads clearly had for each other was essential to its appeal.

"For some reason, we kind of just fell in love with them the same way that we grew to love Ozzy and Sharon as like a marital unit," Caruso said.

What was maybe strangest about the show was how not-strange it felt. The two Ozzies seemed seamless rather than contradictory.

"You’re realizing that these things are personas and that all personas are these like elaborate complex mosaics of like who a person is," VanArendonk said.

"The Osbournes" had both an immediate and a long-term affect on the genre.

Both Caruso and VanArendonk said shows like "Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica," which followed then-pop stars Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey after they married, was clearly a descendant.

And countless other shows felt its influence, from "The Kardashians" to "The Baldwins" — the recently debuted reality series on Alec Baldwin, his wife Hilaria and their seven kids.

"'The Baldwins’ as a reality show is explicitly modeled on ‘The Osbournes,’ VanArendonk said. "It’s like you have these famous people and now you get to see what their home lives are like, what they are like as parents, what they’re eating, what they are taking on with them on vacation, who their pets are, and they are these sort of cuddly, warm, eccentric figures."