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91It's not art, but it's mighty fun.
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90I never would have believed it, but Branagh gets the balance between pageantry and silliness just right.
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83Thor meets the elevated expectations for superhero movies today, but doesn't exceed them. There's some sloppy plotting, which always shows a certain disregard for the audience's intelligence.
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83It's a film with its own identity, the simple, thrilling story of a handsome god who falls to Earth and reminds everyone what heroes do.
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80Humor is the most powerful weapon deployed by director Kenneth Branagh in Thor, his rollicking take on the comic.
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Apr 26, 201180Chris Hemsworth gives a breakout performance as fallen Norse god.
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80Turn off the snark-o-meter, and this is a return to form for Marvel, introducing a new hero we'll be happy to see again in, oh, about a year or so.
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75Perhaps the best thing that can be said about Thor is that it doesn't feel like a cookie-cutter superhero comic book origin story.
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75Though he looks every inch a brawny Norse god, Hemsworth is not just a hunk. His charisma and charming grin go a long way toward making Thor engaging.
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75Hemsworth, an Aussie actor with a vocal command to match his heaving brawn, doesn't just play the role, he owns it. I'm expecting both sexes will feel his impact.
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75The last 25 minutes of Thor aren't much better than the first. But that hour in between - tasty, funny, robustly acted - more than compensates.
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75His (Branagh) Thor has more complex characters than the usual "Transformers"-style melee; though that may not be what the readers of Marvel comics now want, it satisfied me most of the time.
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75There is nothing in this surprisingly funny, exciting film that feels like homework, and Branagh even dares to end the film on, if not quite a cliffhanger, then a daring "To Be Continued" note.
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75Has a lot of that winking wit we've come to expect from our post-"Spider Man" Marvel movies. It has a hunky, self-mocking young star, solid support from a couple of Oscar winners and the slick sheen that state-of-the-art effects can give you.
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70Equal parts trippy, tacky, and monumental, the blend surprisingly agreeable, a happy change from all those aggressively down-to-earth superhero flicks like "Iron Man."
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70Branagh's completely at home in this kind of inflated family drama, of course, and the three guys yell, sulk and brood in their ridiculous costumes to fine effect.
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70At its best moments, Thor weaves a spot of magic from the complex science of $150-million fantasy-film technology.
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Apr 26, 201170Thor delivers the goods so long as butt is being kicked and family conflict is playing out in celestial dimensions, but is less thrilling during the Norse warrior god's rather brief banishment on Earth.
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67All that director Kenneth Branagh must do with Thor is not mess it up, and he succeeds. But that isn't enough. The results aren't as exhilarating as the first "Iron Man," but Downey can't play every superhero.
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63There's plenty of smash, thunder and brawl for the kids. But in taking a bit of Hulk and a bit of Superman while re-imagining Excalibur as a hammer, Thor amounts to putting new horns on old ideas. And the screenplay sounds like the lyrics of Spinal Tap.
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63With its references to other properties in the Marvel universe and to classic tales of redemption, this no-surprises summer movie might appeal to those who've been bitten by radioactive spiders or the Shakespeare bug.
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63For a holding maneuver, Thor itself turns out to be diverting enough - not close to a sharp-edged romp like "Iron Man" but not the B-movie roadshow some of us were expecting.
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60The dude with the blond mane and bulging biceps clearly owns that hammer. And when the screenplay gives him something besides arrogance to work with, he owns the movie too.
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May 3, 201160Unfortunately, the committee-designed script never finds a consistent balance between building characters, delivering action and pushing the story forward.
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58I prefer the goofier approach, which is why, even though Hemsworth isn't going to be cast in "King Lear" anytime soon, he's the best thing about Thor.
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50The year's most divided movie to date; everything that happens in the higher realms, vaguely derived from Nordic legend, is posturing nonsense, whereas the scenes down here are managed, for the most part, with dexterity and wit. [16 May 2011, p. 133]
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50This is eminently missable, though the mosaic design of Asgard, Thor's mythical realm, is pretty cool.
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50A crappy 3-D conversion job mars this otherwise competent, energetic and cheerfully hambone Marvel adaptation from director Kenneth Branagh.
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50The effects are effective. The humor is humorous and just self-referential enough to let you know the film doesn't take itself too seriously.
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50Alas, the news is mixed: Thor ain't much of a movie but it's a great career move. Both movie and move belong to director Kenneth Branagh.
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50Thor has its strengths, but it is finally something of a mishmash with designs on being more interesting than it manages to be.
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50The absolute and unbroken mediocrity of Thor is evidence of its success. This movie is not distinctively bad, it is axiomatically bad. And THAT is depressing. A howling turkey is at least something to laugh at, and maybe even something to see. But Thor is an example of the programmed triumph of commercial calculation over imagination.
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50Hemsworth looks a good deal more like NFL receiver Jeremy Shockey than he does the immortal Avenger.
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50All told, though, Thor suffers from "Iron Man 2" syndrome: too much backstory, too many subplots and character introductions, and not nearly enough full-frontal nudity from Natalie Portman, who frankly is given very little to work with here.
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40No matter how the filmmakers move Heaven and Earth, this comic-book adaptation looks cool but contains very little thunder. The fault is a script by a five-headed beast which contains fateful missteps.
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40Thor accomplishes its essential goal and little else, which is to introduce the mighty warrior to the Marvel screen universe.
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38The standards for comic book superhero movies have been established by "Superman," "The Dark Knight," "Spider-Man 2" and "Iron Man." In that company "Thor" is pitiful. Consider even the comparable villains (Lex Luthor, the Joker, Doc Ock and Obadiah Stane). Memories of all four come instantly to mind. Will you be thinking of Loki six minutes after this movie is over?
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May 4, 201130An astonishingly awkward marriage of ancient Norse mythology and 21st-century nonsense, Thor, directed by Kenneth Branagh, works too hard at simply functioning to assert why it, or we, should bother.
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20All the rest of Thor's 113 minutes felt so synthetic and overfamiliar that those brief flashes of spontaneity stood out like Morse code messages from another, better movie.
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10Like Thor's hammer, this ersatz epic bludgeons its victims into submission. What's more, it requires them to stare at the source of their punishment through 3-D glasses.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 162 out of 228
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Mixed: 34 out of 228
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Negative: 32 out of 228
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10
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