Black Widow (2021) We always nod our head and smile a bit whenever we read about critics and audiences suffering Marvel Superhero Movie burnout......
'Cause we began suffering that eye-rolling reaction to the MCU universe long before it became a 'thing'.....
No matter how much money Disney poured into these movies, no matter how aggressively they were marketed, no matter how much the Marvel fans either fawned and/or fumed over the fates and fortunes of their favorite characters, it always amounted to the same stuff......
.......people in spiffy costumes pounding on other people in spiffy costumes, throwing each other around like frisbees, pausing only for sarcastic meta jokes and assorted snarky wisecracks.....
And as we pointed out in some our other musings on Marvel product, reviewing these movies is akin to passing artistic judgement on a some national televised parade......(oooh, look at the size of that giant float, ooooh, look at the pretty dancers and acrobats, oooooh, look at marching bands.....)
Having gotten the rant portion of this post off our chest, let's just move on to all the things we liked about "Black Widow".......
Scarlett Johansson and Florence Pugh.....make one hell of a team of unflappable, indestructible kick-ass super-babes. (and who can resist Pugh indulging in some knowing mockery of Johansson's carefully arranged pose whenever she drops to her feet from heights that would normally kill a real human being......)
David Harbour and Rachel Weisz.....serving as a fake 'mother' and 'father' to Johansson and Pugh, who turn out to be fake 'sisters' as well. The film only slows down in the middle for an extended reunion between this dysfuntional quartet of deep cover Russian operatives who posed as an apple pie American family, (a la the series, "The Americans" and the film "Little Nikita") Oddly enough, it's the one feature of the movie that sets it apart from the other Marvels......and we sensed the actors were having as good a time at playing it as we did watching it.
And the rest of it? Usual Marvel boilerplate.......CGI car chases, CGI explosions, CGI vehicles, CGI stunts......all of which bend the laws of gravity, if not break them altogether......
Let us now pause (as we did with 'Fast and Furious 9') to send out our thoughts and prayers out to the dozens of innocent anonymous motorists who almost certainly end up either killed or maimed as collateral damage whenever superheroes hit the road......
If you only consider yourself a casual spectator of the passing Marvel parade, "Black Widow" as one of the most accessible of the films to enjoy........no alternate universes that require a doctorate in physics to comprehend, no glowy alien objects that everyone must possess to control the cosmos.....and no traffic jam of costumed actors one-upping each other with non-stop zingers.
Just four very watchable actors to show you a popcorn-gobblin' good time. 3 stars (***).
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