Summer of laughter has begun

By Nellie Curtiss …

Now that we are rounding the bend to a vaccinated population and hopefully to reducing covid variants or mutants, it’s time for a summer of laughter.

On Netflix, Thunder Force staring Melissa McCarthy and Olivia Spencer is a feel good, laugh a lot, and do good movie, primed for our summer’s viewing and laughing.

Kira Goldberg, Netflix VP of Film, said of the notion of best friends uniting to solve a problem, “Too often superhero movies are too dark and comedies too raunchy to enjoy as a family. We wanted Thunder Force to be something that teens, parents (and yes, my 9- and 12-year-old) could enjoy separately and together.”

Using humor to see truth, the premise is that best friends from school, Lydia and Emily make a promise that if they were superheroes, they would rescue the world from “mis-creants” which are genetically altered sociopaths resulting from unusually high solar radiation in the early 80s. The characters are forty-something Emily, a lifelong scientist following in her parents’ path, and Lydia, a heavy equipment operator.

One viewer told me that the movie reminded her of Ghostbusters. There are vignettes that nod to earlier sci-fi creations, like Frankenstein, Batman, Superman, The Invisible Man, X-Men, Black Panther or spots related to Back to the Future, and any number of super villains like Loki or Lex Luther.

Given that this movie is aimed at families, the silliness is not written for CBS Sunday Morning or Hannity, but more like Stephen Colbert or David Letterman or Saturday morning cartoons. There are more nods to strong man games, Dirty Dancing that isn’t dirty, Crab Monster B-movies, gangster stories, and even nods to History Channel’s The Vikings and femme fatales. One supper with Grandma turns prayer scenes into Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First” with misheard words: morality and mortality.

And the little girls watching won’t miss that the unusual motherly superheroes are women. They will see that scientists can be women, that heavy equipment operators can be women, that boxers can be women, that problem solvers can be women, that women can see problems and do something about them.

Then, of course, the “dirt bag” villain is a “mis-creant” businessman running for mayor who is also a sociopath, egotistical, like real-life North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-un who kills even close advisers, manipulates for money, hires mis-creant goons and ultimately expresses no sense of morality. Viewers can see through the bad guy.

I also think Netflix viewers will see this movie as an opportunity to laugh together while seeing these female characters as heroes and reminding them of the role models in their own lives: grandmothers, mothers, aunts, and sisters.

It’s time for the summer of laughter and nods to strong women in our lives.