DC Comics’ slow-off-the-mark Marvel knock-off The Flash is just one multiverse movie too many

Despite a bonkers collection of cameos, The Flash movie is overconfident, writes Leigh Paatsch. Read full review.

Ezra Miller’s Barry Allen – aka The Flash – teams up with his younger self in The Flash.

The Flash

Director: Andy Muschetti (It)

Starring: Ezra Miller, Michael Keaton, Sasha Calle, Ben Affleck

**1/2

The fast and the spurious

With the release of The Flash, those lag-behind lunkheads over at the DC Comics movie studio finally get to feed some of their best superhero IP into a multiverse mulcher.

You know, just like their cooler, cleverer rivals over at Marvel have been doing for yonks. In fact, the No.1 movie in cinemas right now, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, is a Marvel-made multiverse affair, continually leaping from any given time, place and reality to anywhere else it feels like.

It is not a great movie, but it is indeed a busy one. Crucially, Spider-Verse does leave you wanting a holiday from the two-or-more-timelines scripting format for a while.

Therefore, The Flash feels as if it has arrived slightly too late to a party that is already winding down. Kind of ironic for a character famous for always doing everything in a rush, but there you go.

Michael Keaton returns as Batman in The Flash.

While The Flash as a movie is a bit of an overconfident, underdelivering mess, it is never truly boring.

How could it be, when it has a new, improved and imposing Supergirl (Sasha Calle) on its books, along with multiple Batmans (Ben Affleck and a fantastic Michael Keaton), and a bonkers collection of blink-and-you-won’t-quite-believe it cameos?

Amid all that mixed business coming and going throughout the screenplay, it can sometimes be hard maintaining focus on the main plots, all of which spiral out of a time-travelling dilemma spawned by The Flash’s alter ego Barry Allen (a serviceable Ezra Miller, despite recent off-screen controversies).

Without giving too much away, Barry zooms back to a past where his late mother’s death may be prevented if certain events can be detoured.

Ezra Miller as The Flash and Sasha Calle as Supergirl in The Flash.

Of course, it’s not long before Barry bumps into a younger, cockier alternate version of himself.

However, it does take some time to get to what these two might jointly do with their respective guises as The Flash when a famous nemesis of the Justice League starts throwing his sinister weight around.

The Flash is in cinemas now

Elemental (PG)

Director: Peter Sohn (The Good Dinosaur)

Starring: The voices of Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie

****

Running hot and cold in the best ways

Ember (Leah Lewis) and Wade (Mamoudou Athie) in a scene from Pixar’s Elemental.

While many movie fans feel that the work of Pixar Animation is not as gilt-edged with greatness as it used to be, we can still all agree the output of this groundbreaking studio remains of an incredibly high standard.

A case in point is Pixar’s latest offering, Elemental.

From the moment we are taken inside the movie’s principal setting – a thriving, hyper-environmental metropolis known as Element City – a wow factor is in play that is at once captivating, as it is totally original.

Element City is a place where everyone not only belongs to one of four tribes – fire, water, air and land – but are also made of the very same stuff.

For example, if you are an air being, your physical properties are essentially those of a cloud. If you are from the land gang, you are compromised of the finest soil on earth (with leaves for hair, and the occasional flower growing under your arms).

The fiery young woman Ember (voice of Leah Lewis) lives with her immigrant parents in Firetown.

As for those who hail from places of fire and water, they are the most intrinsically opposed of all who live in Element City.

In fact, the social norms of the town dictate that it is best that fire and water avoid each other wherever possible. Should they get too close, one of them just might disappear in a puff of smoke, while the other could evaporate.

Yikes! So when a fiery shopgal named Ember (voiced by Leah Lewis) meets the watery city inspector Wade (Mamoudou Athie), the two should not be getting along at all. Let alone falling in love. How could that possibly work?

Well, in the timeless tradition of love invariably finding a way, Elemental shows us how two opposites not only attract, but can join forces to change the world (and the elements) around them.

As has been the case with the most ambitious Pixar productions (titles such as Inside Out particularly come to mind here), Elemental dares to think big, but does not leave any smaller audience member behind as it touches on some complex and intriguing themes.

Oh, and the movie is great fun, too, landing in that hard-to-find, yet easy-to-enjoy sweet spot where a relatable romantic comedy meets an exciting tale of both adventure and redemption.

Most importantly of all, the dynamic world-building needed to have us believing in the existence of a place as magical as Element City is executed with some of the finest visual work Pixar has ever put its name to.

Elemental is in cinemas now

Originally published as DC Comics’ slow-off-the-mark Marvel knock-off The Flash is just one multiverse movie too many