The Ranting Penguin

Let’s be frank, Aquaman is not a very good move. DC/Warner’s latest attempt at making a good comic book movie starts out a little by the numbers. There is backstory on his parents and how he is half surface dweller, half Atlantean. His mother is a Princess of Atlantis found by a lighthouse keeper after a storm. They fall in love, have a kid and name him Arthur. She is taken back to Atlantis. He’s raised by his dad alone. One day he finds out he can talk to fish in a scene that reminds me of Harry Potter at the Zoo.

Flash forward post Justice League, and Arthur Curry, known as The Aquaman among seafarers is off doing his thing. He saves a Russian sub from pirates. Yeah, it will make sense later why pirates would attack a Russian sub. Not a lot, but it will.

After knocking back a few pints with his dad at a bar, he meets Mera, another princes from “Under the Sea, ” And yes, she has Ariel’s Red Hair from Little Mermaid. She basically says, “Hey your brother is a jerk and wants to wage war on the surface. You are actually the older one and have a claim to the throne, even if you are half human.”

She neglects to mention that she is also engaged to him. But he must also fight his brother in ritual combat to claim the throne. Yeah, we’ve seen this in Black Panther, but this is underwater! Plus it uses a lot more CG. And they have an octopus playing drums. (The musically inclined octopus is in the comics by the way.) This is where I laughed out loud in the theater and figured out DC decided this is just going to be a silly trashy comic book movie. Never before in the modern DC movie era have the filmmakers embraced the silliness of a comic book movie as this has.

It’s a good thing too, because if this movie tried to take itself seriously it would be truly horrible. As it is, it’s full of cringe worthy dialog, flat generic characters, a convoluted story, and an obligatory fetch-it quest for a magical McGuffin. At the center of it is Jason Mamoa, who first got his big break in Stargate: Atlantis. With his “bro, I’m just here to have fun” performance, the film is a ride that takes us from one action scene to another. Amber Heard wavers from trying to be overly serious to eventually embracing the silliness of everything. She has a dress made from jellyfish, really. But she also gets to impale some bad guys with Italian wine.

Other actors seem wasted, however. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II makes a great Black Manta, unfortunately he’s a villain that is under utilized, and comes across as more of a set up for a return in a possible sequel. Patrick Wilson as King Orm, Aquaman’s younger Aryan brother is about as bland as they come. And Willem Dafoe, the biggest waste, is there as just a plot device as a mentor and to Arthur and a mole in Orm’s trust. It was fun to see Dolph Lundgren as King Nereus. He does come across as an old leader.

James Wan, as director, certainly uses a colorful pallet in creating the undersea world of not only Atlantis but other Kingdoms as well. And his action scenes are like Star Wars battle underwater. Well, it’s more like Star Wars battles than the last couple of Star Wars movies anyway. They is certainly a lot going on and I don’t even want to guess what the body count is during some of these fights.

There is a lot of Aquaman lore crammed into a two-and-a-half hour movie apparently. It certainly felt like it, but I’m no Aquaman expert. Perhaps they weren’t expecting a sequel. Despite how overly convoluted the movie is, it is full of action scenes that never become repetitive. And the underlying quest that Arthur has to undertake feels like a video game quest, going from one point of the globe to another and recovering clues.

So, no Aquaman is not a good movie. It’s a mess of popcorn trash. But it seems to know that it’s a silly movie and because of that, it is fun. It’s a visual feast of absolute junk food.