Masters of The Universe: Or How I Learned To Set Aside My Cynicism and Just Enjoy The Ride.

Wacky, silly, joyous, bombastic, campy with an extra helping of creatine thrown in. Like many action comedies of the Late 80s - Early 2000s I feel it takes a "throw a lot at the audience and see what sticks" approach. At the same time its breezy narrative and campy thrills wouldn't land without either today's technology and audiences meta-savvy sense of self-defeating irony (thank you SNL and Marvel).

One could be cynical and say "this is a blatant cash-grab" or "this is a poor attempt to revive a flagging IP", and do you know what? You could be right. But guess what, this was one of the few times that I just wanted to just turn off my hyper awareness and just lean into the utter goofiness of the the spectacle. I did and I was happily entertained. This might.

The story mostly concerns a down-on-his-luck Adam Glenn who fantasises about reclaiming his birthright and redeem himself in the eyes of his Father for his apparent childhood shortcomings.

I like the fact that it told its own self-contained story. The ending does leave room for more, but there' some pleasure to be had in just leaving it to one's own imagination about what might happen next. There was the proverbial smorgasbord of side characters ranging from entertaining to downright irritating. Yes there was, as I expected, a callback to the old guard giving advice to the new guy but given the context it was fine. It wasn't like it was the old guy passing the torch to the new guy route taken in Thundergun 4: Maximum Cool (it didn't work for that franchise and hence it was speedily rebooted). Yes I'm aware that's a fictional universe set within another fictional universe. But as the writer of this I have no obligation to you the reader except to write honestly from my mind. There was an Amazon cameo via the heroes being helped by on their way by the Delivery Driver Ex Machina sent at the probable behest of the Masters of The Corporate Universe. It was totally silly and yet I felt it totally worked. I didn't find myself rolling my eyes at it. It's the kind of on-the-nose move that'll probably drive a few more Prime subscriptions. So y'know more power to them I guess.

It's one of the few films that I feel really would have benefitted from a 3D release at my local cinema.

In short, it's like Batman Forever meets King Arthur: Legend of the Sword with a slightly subdued Michael Bay style approach to reckless destructive abandon.