Captain Marvel flies but doesn't soar

When it comes to paying dues there are few superheroes who have done more than Captain Marvel. In various incarnations the character has been male, dead, female, objectified, raped, abused, and generally treated as an irrelevance. So, no one could grudge Marvel her two hours in the spotlight in this movie. It’s pronounced ‘Mar-VELL’ by the way, suggesting the Kree were big fans of Elizabethan poetry.

Although until recently she has never been more than a second string character Marvel, like Doctor Strange and, to a certain extent, Ant-Man, seems destined to play a significant role in a number of forthcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe stories. The end of Avengers: Infinity War (2018) was a big clue in that direction.

In those circumstance it makes sense that this movie acts as something of a placeholder filling in some gaps in various backstories before this phase of the MCU saga comes to an end in a couple of months. And on that basis, the film is no better than it ought to be. It works well as a broadly entertaining adventure with a couple of engaging performances from Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson at its heart.

Larson is the titular heroine, a young woman with a mysterious past who becomes a key combatant in an intergalactic war between two alien nations - the Kree and the Skrulls - with Earth as a proxy battlefield. Jackson finally gives us his first substantive outing as Nick Fury since Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014). Since this story takes place in 1995 there is a lot of digital de-ageing going on with Fury, but Jackson does a good job in performing through the pixels.

The back and forth between him and Larson is one of the highlights of the film which at times struggles to decide whether it as an intergalactic saga a bickering romcom or an emo drama. The transition between these two themes from co-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck is a little less sure-footed than it might have been. Their lo-fi indie efforts such as the excellent Half Nelson (2006) don’t seem like the ideal fit for this film.

There are moments, especially in the action set-pieces, where you get a sense that they have put rather too much trust in the second unit and there is a slight disconnect between the action scenes and the character moments. I did however like the 1995 style visual palette for the 1995 car chase; a nice touch.

Even so, the film feels clunky and a little leaden in places and could probably have done with a little more zip in the cut to improve the rhythm.

One of the big issues for me with the action sequences is the lack of jeopardy. It’s established early on that Mar-vell is one of the most powerful beings in the universe so there’s not a lot of harm that can come to her. This tends to reduce the fight scenes to the level of video games and makes for a less passive experience than we have become used to.

Overall Captain Marvel lacks that sense of thrilling excitement that comes from the best of the MCU offerings. It has to act as a piece of exposition linking ten years of a franchise so it is inevitable the sailing is not quite as smooth as it might be.

The performances are good though and there are nice turns from Jude Law and Ben Mendelsohn in supporting roles. And those gaps that need to be filled in have been filled in and MCU completists can now construct a pretty credible time line from 1941 to 2019 if they really want to.

Inevitably you would expect to see Captain Marvel back in a sequel and this is indicated in the finale of the movie. However if you stick around for the mid-credits sequence – and who doesn’t these days? – it becomes apparent you’ll be seeing her a lot sooner than that.

Fighting with My Family will make you submit

When you think of WWE, formerly the World Wrestling Federation, lots of things come to mind. Violence, spectacle, noise, extravagance, action, and so on. The WWE is superhero comics come to life in its larger than reality offering, but one thing you don’t normally associate with the spandex clad warriors is heart, or love, or warmth, or affection.

Yet these are the values at the heart of Fighting with My Family which demonstrates the soft power of this multibillion-dollar enterprise. Of course, it is relentlessly on brand, it is a WWE film after all, but writer-director Stephen Merchant has slipped some human values under the radar in this simple but heartfelt story.

The WWE with its world of bad guys (heels) and clean-cut heroes (babyfaces) loves an underdog story and this may be the best of them all. It is the true story of the Knight family, who lived a life of borderline villainy in a Norwich council estate until wrestling saves them. They have their own tatty franchise – the WAW – and dad Ricky (Nick Frost) and mum Julia (Lena Headey) run the shows and their son Zak (Jack Lowden) is the star. However, when an opponent doesn’t turn up his sister Saraya (Florence Pugh) gets in the ring to save the family from financial ruin. She is a huge success and becomes a star in their very small pond.

Ricky has been pestering the WWE for a shot for his kids and when the big show comes to London, they get a try-out. Surprisingly they want Saraya and not Zak.

This is pretty much where the Channel 4 documentary on which this film is based left them, but this is also where the film gets interesting. The story focuses on both siblings; Saraya in her fish out of water existence in pro wrestling, and Zak having to deal with losing the only shot he had of making something of himself and his imminently arriving new family.

Both Lowden and Pugh are excellent and completely convincing. The real star for me is a wonderful script from Merchant which avoids the clichés but is full of beautiful character moments. There is genuine warmth to this script which informs the performances and makes sure that the film is often surprisingly moving.

The disconnect between the surface glitz of Florida and the hardscrabble streets of Norwich – which is where the heart of the film lies – makes for compelling viewing. It also provides a solid grounding for both Zak and Saraya’s ambition. Like The Simpsons, the Knight family may be dysfunctional, but their love for each other is unconditional.

The support from Frost and Headey is equally good but Merchant allows them to provide a frame in which Pugh and Lowden can shine. Great things are predicted for both and this is a major calling card for them.

Obviously there has to be Transatlantic appeal and Dwayne Johnson – one of the co-producers – lends his clout by stepping back in time to his earlier incarnation of The Rock. Vince Vaughn, who is getting better and better as a character actor with every movie, does a nice turn as the tough but fair wrestling coach who can make Soraya a star.

Fighting with My Family is a film which is full of sentiment without ever being sentimental, a neat trick to pull off, and shows that even in the fictional world of professional wrestling there is still room for real dreams to come true.