The Stream: Unfocused and slightly boring action flick

The Big Screen: A couple entertaining parts

The Final Bill: A movie doing too much and too little at the same time makes for a jumbled average mess

– S2S: Movie Review
Director: Patty Jenkins
Writers: Patty Jenkins (screenplay by), Geoff Johns (screenplay by) | 4 more credits »
Stars: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig | See full cast & crew »
Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 2 hours and 25 minutes
Platform: HBO Max and theaters!

Anticipation it’s keeping me waiting but now it’s here. It took so long for Wonder Woman 1984 (WW84) to be released everyone either forgot about it or was sitting on pins and needles. Honestly, I was one of the ones who was starting to forget that this movie was even coming out until the news that it was coming to HBO Max. So you know I had to check it out on the Christmas weekend. Would this sequel live up to the hype of first movie? Or will it be forgotten in the utter mess that 2020 and Pandemic world has left us in?

I’m going to keep it simple as possible with WW84 and that’s hard to do with a film that was all over the place. WW84 was a jumbled, slightly boring, unfocused mess. When I say “mess”, I don’t mean because the movie was horrible, I mean “mess” because the movie was just very average compared to the anticipation. I’ve only seen and heard people say this movie was “meh”, “bad”, “boring” or “good”. I’m was quite frankly baffled at that range but not after viewing the movie. I understand that most of this angst comes from the viewers and reviewers because the first movie was just so focused and detailed. WW84 had promise but, just like Tenet, it suffered from “you’re doing too much” disease. Yet strangely, WW84 also didn’t do quite enough, and for a movie that runs for 2 hours and 26 minutes that’s quite a feat. The movie looked pretty good but also didn’t give us the magic from the first movie. Except you, Gal Gadot, you are magical to look at. The dialogue was basic even though Kristen Wiig and Pedro Pascal did their best to keep it interesting. Side note, K. Wiig gave Gal a run for her good looking money for a minute there in the movie. But let me focus, don’t get me started on the action. There was nothing new and the cool points of the trailer were so trivial and minimal in the actual movie. It seems like they forgot this was a super hero movie because there was way too little action for a long movie like this. Either give us more action or make the action you have so dope it’s memorable, but they found a way to do neither. It was only a little taste here and a little taste there but that’s about it. It’s honestly like the whole creative team were all on different pages for this movie and the editing couldn’t save the final product. The puzzle was already configured and the pieces clearly weren’t in the right spots. I mean for goodness sake there wasn’t even a real villain in the movie. Come on DC! You’re already lagging behind in the movie franchise world, you cannot fumble the ball like this after such a good first film just a few years ago.

With all of that said, the movie really is just an average super hero flick. There is some entertainment with action but the length of the movie and the unfocused narrative lead to the movie feeling boring and inconsequential. If I’d paid for this in the theater, I’d be pretty upset but as a streaming options, it’s not a reason to get HBO MAX but if you already have the app you can stream it if you’re bored with a handful of popcorn.