The Marvels Review: 5 Ups & 5 Downs

1. The Tone Is All Over The Place

Nobody's expecting something super-serious from a Captain Marvel movie, but the first film had a much firmer handle on its tone in terms of juggling earnest and comedic moments.

The Marvels is by comparison an off-kilter farce that's likely to produce some severe tonal whiplash in audiences.

Two scenes in particular - one involving a planet with a... unique mode of communication, the other involving cats - are so jarringly goofy that they almost threaten to derail the movie's entire established tone.

When you consider that some of the film's sillier scenes are placed directly next to some of its grimmest, it's easy to look at The Marvels as a bit of a mood car crash and a film that just didn't get the fundamentals nailed down enough during pre-production.

Yet even accepting these notable gripes, The Marvels is far from a disaster. And so, here's where it actually succeeds...