Film review: Masters Of The Universe

In recent weeks, an adult parody of Masters Of The Universe has popped up on the internet. It stars Angela White (we have no idea who she is...), and is all done with extreme pantomime campness and big winking, with as much scenery getting chewed as…

Look, the point is, even this version with (apparently, we hear) one of the world’s biggest grumble stars hamming it up as Evil-Lyn is only marginally more knowing, silly and genuinely funny (it popped up on Insta, okay?) than this locking of bits between Amazon and Mattel. It’s also this amusing quality that sits atop the grubby reason for both movies’ existence. But at least the naughty one is honest about it.

Prince Adam (Nicholas Galitzine) is stuck on Earth, having been sent away from Eternia as a little boy, to hide The Sword Of Power from an attack by the evil forces of Jared Leto (Skeletor). Having lost the sword while travelling through the portal, he’s spent 15 years longing for home, and now works in HR at a faceless company in Oklahoma.

Eventually he finds the sword, sending a signal to both his childhood friend Teela, and also Sketetor’s furry sidekick Beastman, who come to Earth to save (her) or kill (him) Adam. When they make it back to Eternia, it’s destroyed, and nobody believes that Adam is the chosen one who will lead them to glory.

Anyway, his quest includes discovering his power, his clothes turning into basically a bottle of body lotion, beginning loads of eyebrow-raising gags about his muscles and thighs. And he does lead them to glory. So that's good.

These bits of horsing around are the good parts. There is no joke about Adam’s big-handed hardman comrade Fisto that’s too low to use. Jared Leto is a surprising hoot as Skeletor, being unreconisable in both look (but how does a skull have facial expressions?) and voice, talking like a dramatic Stewie Griffin, a WWE heel as done by a ripped Christopher Biggins. The punchline is often just ‘the cringe’ – Skeletor saying something dramatic to be met with awkward silence from his minions, a la Dr Evil – but it’s mostly a stitch. Ditto Evil-Lyn (Alison Brie), taking a leaf from Uma Thurman’s ‘Do it as a drag queen’ technique for being Poison Ivy.

There’s a surreal five minutes near the end, and the eventual victory over Skeletor doesn’t take itself seriously at all. Plus The Darkness and Brian May are on the soundtrack, pretty much redoing Queen's Flash Gordon soundtrack backwards. Again all to the good.

The problem is that all these moments don’t mask how lousy the actual movie itself is. It’s way too long, and there’s just enough calculated yucking it up to keep you from noticing how slow it’s actually moving, or how dull and easily-solved most of the jeopardy is.

The nods to the cartoon wear thin after a while (and Battle-Cat's CGI is eye-meltingly bad), again, used as fluff to distract from its shortcomings. Dolph Lundgren from the 1987 flick pops up, and has a good line, but this just shows up its new model. Meanwhile, Idris Elba as Duncan seems to be doing his best to beat those ‘He’d be good as James Bond’ allegations, telling his arc of failure, drunken depression and heroic redemption like a man waiting for his cheque to clear.

And if we sound cynical, wait til you see the massive bit of Amazon van placement. The whole thing strains to do what a meta movie did for fellow toy line Barbie, except Barbie’s veneer of irony and transgressiveness was smart enough to navigate it all. This just seems to think going ‘LOLZ, awk-waaaard’ is enough while laughing at how naff things from the '80s look now.

It’s not a complete disaster. You will laugh a lot. But all this knowing piss-taking is, in a manner opposite to the moral of the story, “just a front”. By the power of Greyskull, this has fuck-all power.

Verdict: 2/5

Masters Of The Universe is released on June 3.

Read this next:

• 12 rock stars who have written their own comic books
• Film review: Barbie
  
• 11 reasons why ’90s movies had the best soundtracks