Metacritic reviews

I never once rolled my eyes at a joke that was clearly dropped in, so it could be a zinger and make it to the trailer. It successfully silenced a rather jaded MCU fan by offering a story that had it all without having to sacrifice its soul to the MCU machine that is eager to churn out stories for future phases.

Thor: Love and Thunder is a return to form for the MCU: delivering a great solo story that is emotional, exciting, and downright funny as hell.

The surface-level delights are pretty damn delightful, as is Waititi's ability to just let things be strange for no clear reason other than, well, it's fun or cool or hilarious.

Thor: Love and Thunder is held back by a cookie-cutter plot and a mishandling of supporting characters, but succeeds as the MCU's first romantic comedy thanks to Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman's chemistry.

But Waititi is to be treasured for simply seeing all this as lightweight fun, a bit of nonsense with a bunch of movie stars dressing up like gods and having a laugh.

The film is probably on its strongest ground with the most purely absurd touches.

If this latest one was aiming to mix it up by giving equal weight to the masks of comedy and tragedy, it’s an effort that falls short.

Thor: Love and Thunder isn’t just a misfire, it’s a scam. Its characters only move forward in the most artificial ways. Their status at the end of the film is no more intriguing than it was at the beginning. It’s the worst thing a film in this mode can be: inconsequential.

Dipping less rewardingly from the same well in Thor: Love and Thunder, Waititi pushes the wisecracking to tiresome extremes, snuffing out any excitement, mythic grandeur or sense of danger that the God of Thunder’s latest round of rote challenges might hope to generate. Chris Hemsworth continues to give great musclebound himbo, but the stakes never acquire much urgency in a movie too busy being jokey and juvenile to tell a gripping story.

Across Taika Waititi’s film, a war against the gods feels like an afterthought to a bad rom-com.