{"id":58613,"date":"2023-08-21T12:47:37","date_gmt":"2023-08-21T16:47:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=58613"},"modified":"2023-08-21T12:47:42","modified_gmt":"2023-08-21T16:47:42","slug":"blue-beetle-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2023\/08\/blue-beetle-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Beetle \u2013 Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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                Having seen the best (\u201cThe Dark Knight,\u201d \u201cSpider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse\u201d) and worst (\u201cMorbius,\u201d \u201cFant4stic\u201d) of what the modern superhero genre has to offer, I can report that \u201cBlue Beetle\u201d falls right smack in the middle of the spectrum. It would be easy to write off this movie\u2019s staggering averageness with a wide-brush line like \u201cnot a classic, not a disaster,\u201d but I feel the need to stress the degree to which this movie is right on par. It isn\u2019t so much that it\u2019s dull or that I didn\u2019t care about it, because that would be the mark of a bad superhero movie. It\u2019s that the movie manages the curious feat of having just enough of a unique identity for me to recommend it with a bare minimum of passion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                Our hero is Jamie Reyes (Xolo Maridue\u00f1a), a smart, resourceful recent college graduate. He\u2019s happy to be back in his hometown of Palmera City with his family, including his mother Rocio (Elpidia Carillo), father Alberto (Dami\u00e1n Alc\u00e1zar), sister Milagro (Belissa Escobedo), Nana (Adriana Barraza), and crazy uncle Rudy (George Lopez). But he\u2019s less happy to hear that his family has fallen on hard times and is about to lose the house. He vows to help them out financially. A cleaning gig at the home of wealthy industrialist Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon) goes badly, but he does make an impression on Victoria\u2019s niece Jenny (Bruna Marquezine), who half-heartedly invites him to apply for a job at corporate headquarters the next day. When he gets there, a skittish Jenny tells him to flee with a mysterious box, keep it safe and hidden, and above all, not open it. It\u2019s maybe an hour before he opens the box in front of his family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                Inside the box is The Scarab, an alien artifact that immediately attaches itself to Jamie and causes him develop a metallic skin, destroy most of the house, and rocket into outer space. Eventually Jamie figures out that he\u2019s inside a super-suit that is certainly dangerous in his hands, but even more dangerous in the hands of the military or evildoers like Victoria or her mechanized henchman Carapax (Raoul Max Trujillo). He seeks out Jenny for help getting the Scarab out of his system, and she takes him to the hidden lair of her long-missing father, who was secretly a low-level superhero called Blue Beetle. Jamie and his family use some of Blue Beetle\u2019s tech and resources, though I don\u2019t believe Jamie ever officially takes on the name himself. Whatever, fans are going to call the Jamie \u201cBlue Beetle\u201d going forward no matter what.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                Story-wise, it\u2019s not hard to see the inspirations for \u201cBlue Beetle.\u201d The main character gets his powers from a bug at a corporate building like Spider-Man, he\u2019s inside of a metal suit like Iron Man, he has a testy relationship with the symbiote (voiced by Becky G) attached to his body like Venom, some of his powers are imagination-based like Green Lantern, he hides out in an armory beneath a mansion like Batman, and I\u2019m sure I\u2019m missing several others. Maybe Blue Beetle\u2019s real superpower is that he can amalgamate every other superhero movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                And yet, \u201cBlue Beetle\u201d compensates for this lack of originality with a healthy dose of heart. Not too much heart, characters like Jamie and Jenny are likeable enough, but they\u2019re pretty standard as far as superhero leads go. But there is an undeniable charm to the Reyes family, and it\u2019s hard not to be swept up in their chemistry and care for each other. Then again, this movie isn\u2019t much different than dozens of other superhero movies, and it\u2019s not like most of them don\u2019t have likeable characters too. I was going to give this movie a non-recommendation grade of C for being too bland, but then Nana showed up and saved the day. If you see the movie, you\u2019ll understand why I had to bump the grade up to a B- just for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: B-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBlue Beetle\u201d is rated PG-13 for sequences of action and violence, language, and some suggestive references. Its running time is 127 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver                 Having seen the best (\u201cThe Dark Knight,\u201d \u201cSpider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse\u201d) and worst (\u201cMorbius,\u201d \u201cFant4stic\u201d) of what the modern superhero genre has to offer, I can… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":58614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[2518],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58613"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58613"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58616,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58613\/revisions\/58616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}