BLUE BEETLE - Movie Review

Image Source

Title: Blue Beetle

As DC digs deeper into its basket of Superhero comics, it's a happy sight to see authentic non-white superheros get their chance in the spotlight rather than the current trend of just bastardizing a long-time familiar character by running it through the woke translator.

This movie mostly follows canon with Jamie Reyes as Blue Beetle after being chosen by the scarab previously held by Tom Kord. The Jamie Reyes Blue Beetle has been around for over a decade and is a member of Teen Titans in the comic books, so anyone bitching about casting needs to shut the hell up.

The plot is pretty simple and somewhat familiar. Kord Industries (as in Tom Kord) was a benevolent uber corporation. He dies and instead of leaving his company to his greedy daughter (Victoria, played by Susan Sarandon), he leaves it to his Son Ted. Ted goes missing and now Victoria is turning the company into a weapons manufacturer, using Tom Kord's inventions (Blue Beetle and Scarab) while his daughter, Jenny , appears to be living the life of an activist version of Paris Hilton.

Our hero Jamie enters the picture as a new college graduate who just started working on the cleaning crew of Victoria's mansion. He interrupts Victoria's henchman harassing Jenny as Jenny confront Victoria, gets fired, and gets invited by jenny to come to Kord Enterprises the next day and she will find him a job.

Jenny, of course, steals the Scarab and while trying to escape, hands it to an unwitting Jamie and chaos ensues.

There is the "what the hell is happening to me" montage and the paranoid unemployed uncle (George Lopez) with the $70,000 pickup who happens to not only be a computer hacker, inventor, and all around caricature of a Mexican, he is also blessed with the ability to be able to immediate operate all high tech equipment and vehicles. So there's that.

The usual, fight and lose, fight and get captured, fight and win because the bad guy has turned good formula is all present.

But what makes the movie fun is the Reyes family. The sarcastic little sister, the Nana that "fought in La Révolution" being a total badass, the uncle being over the top, the "Greatest American Hero" vibe of Jamie all comes together to make this an action flick that's mostly about family. And it pretty much works.

FUN: 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 🍿🍿

Preachy: A slight hint of class envy, but mostly this movie is about family. There is some mention of family members being undocumented. There is some gentrification going on and the family being worried about not being able to afford to stay in their own home, but surprisingly, the only member of the family that is shown with a job is the youngest sister, who works as a housekeeper for Victoria. So the whole class warfare piece kinda evaporates as there's no "Hard-working immigrant family can't make ends meet" vibe backed by anything at all which makes it more window dressing than preachy.

Thanks so much for reading