Octavia Spencer and Melissa McCarthy in a movie together was all I needed to know in order to be excited about seeing Thunder Force. Too bad things didn’t work out the way I expected. Yes, I knew this offering was billed as an action comedy about superheroes. Unfortunately, the comedy failed to make me chuckle or even smile – except when the male villains, The King and Crab Man, played by Bobby Carnavale and Jason Bateman, appeared on screen.

The film’s two excellent co-stars deserve better than this. After all, they both are Oscar® worthy. Spencer earned an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in The Help and two other nominations for The Shape of Water and Hidden Figures. McCarthy received a Best Leading Actress  Oscar® nomination for Can You Ever Forgive Me? and a Best Supporting Actress for Bridesmaids.

What they needed here is a more humorous script, for sure. But Spencer and McCarthy struggle along trying to entertain us. Their costumes and action scenes are not bad, but everything else seems off key. They are supposed to be best friends, yet neither one appears to care much for the other. Spencer has to portray a rather boring character, and that’s not easy to do. McCarthy gets the comedy burden but falters with it during most scenes that are supposed to be funny.        

In “Thunder Force” the laughs are rare.

But superheroes do not care.

Two new ones fight to save their town.

The strongest one seems like a clown.

The other one more like a mom.

One is brain and the other brawn.

Their new names? Hammer and Bingo.

Villains hate them; I’m sure you know!

Bad Laser wants to kill them both.

In fact, that’s her favorite oath.

The King and Crab Man do their best

to give this film a bit of jest. 

Here’s how IMDb explains the plot. “Estranged childhood best friends undergo treatment that gives them powers to help their town.”

To amplify on that, Emily (Spencer) grows up to be a scientist whose goal involves revenge on a group of Miscreants who killed her parents. These Miscreants have super powers of their own, so Emily has been working on a way to gain powers that will help her deal with them. But Lydia (McCarthy) unintentionally interferes with the treatment and gets the strength Emily was supposed to have. All that’s left for Emily is invisibility.

The major Miscreants include: Laser (Pom Klementieff), an overactive electricity thrower; The King (Carnavale), a megalomaniac candidate for mayor; and Crab Man (Bateman), one of The King’s chief minions, who falls for Lydia. Carnavale always gets into his roles whether dramatic or comedic -- and this one is no exception.

Bateman's performance is more low key, but he and McCarthy share outrageous dining and dancing sequences that almost save Thunder Force.             

Dying is easy. Comedy is hard. --- Edmund Gwenn

(Released by Netflix and rated “PG-13” by MPAA.)