By

Thor: Ragnarok

A Thor point

This third “Thor” flick has been described as exciting, colorful, momentous, hilarious and the best of the three. And it is. If you’re TWELVE.

The god of thunder is of course played by Chris Hemsworth, whose main talent is looking hunky. As a comic, however…

Kate Blanchett, looking like a demented caribou, does the villainess honors, but brings little to the genre and is not particularly scary. Her main superpower is apparently the magical ability to boost box office receipts merely by having her name on the posters.

Also paycheck-slumming are Tom Hiddleston (meh), Mark Ruffalo, Idris Elba, Tessa Thompson, Jeff Goldblum and Anthony Hopkins, a former actor.

The movie consists mainly of a string of superpowered beings engaging in numbing set-piece battles among themselves and/or against a host of ho-hum computer-generated bad guys while firing off hit-or-miss one-liners. Been there.

It’s not that I don’t like superhero movies, but there have been more than 100 of these in the last decade, and only a few have really been worth recommending. And while it’s always good to see a SH movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously, the momentous conflicts are sapped by the off-kilter comic timing, and most of the jokes are multiplex-crowd level. (The Hulk mythos is unforgivably messed with.) Guardians of the Galaxy this is not.

To be fair, Marvel and Disney have made precisely the movie that Thor fans wanted. I’m just disappointed they didn’t want, well, something better. (130 min)