Cody's Movie Minute

The Flash Review   The latest superhero flick to hit movie theaters, and what might be the biggest box office flop of all time. Focused on the DC superhero known as the Flash, who has superhuman speed. It seems as though this speed wasn’t followed by the moviegoing audience, as not many seemed to race to the theaters for this film. But is “The Flash’’ a movie that mimics its poor performance, or a great film despite its box office woes? Starring Ezra Miller as The Flash, the superhero speedster. After going back in time to change the past, The Flash is faced with dire consequences that put the entire world at risk. This film is an incredibly mixed bag. It isn’t a dumpster fire of a film by any means, but it isn’t worthy of any awards either. The plot does carry a strong emotional core, but it is also bogged down in a lot of unnecessary elements that feel meaningless. Starting with the positives, the emotion carried throughout the film is strong. The scenes that decide to focus on the more heartfelt feelings are the standout here. The Flash, or Barry Allen, has a few scenes with his mother that do have a lot of heart and are well done. The action in the film was somewhat creative, and led to a lot of fun sequences. The speed of The Flash, a man who can move faster than the blink of an eye, was done pretty well. Scenes focusing on how fast he was moving and what he was able to accomplish through this were interesting. Going to the negatives, however, there are plenty. One of the most egregious to myself were the visual effects in the film. I haven’t seen a film that looks this bad in a very long time. And with a film that is filled with visual effect spectacle, it really weighs it down. When so much of the film looks as though it was produced before the year 2000, it completely takes any spectacle or weight out of the CGI-heavy scenes. And there are many films from before 2000 that still look flawless today. Another element of this film that brings it down is the amount of nostalgia that it attempts to wring out from the past. The largest sign of this is seen in much of the marketing, with his face covering most trailers and posters, would be Michael Keaton returning as Batman. Donning the cape for the first time since 1992’s “Batman Returns”, Keaton felt like such an unnecessary addition. A part of this, I feel, is that I wasn’t around for Keaton’s Batman films. If I had seen those films as a kid, or been a fan of Keaton’s character before, maybe I would feel differently. But just looking at what was presented in this film, I felt this was a prime example, of which there are many, of this film attempting to win over its audience through forcing them to remember other movies or tv shows they enjoyed. “The Flash” is a very mixed film. I feel as though this film, more than most, completely flipped between a movie that was pretty good and a movie that looked and felt like a product of the past. What seems to be the swan song for this franchise, “The Flash” seems to be racing to be forgotten.   RATING: 2.5/5