'Aquaman' is a weird, wild party that overstays its welcome
For about the first half of its running time, Aquaman feels like a fake movie. (And yes, I know it was already a fake movie on Entourage.)
To be clear, I mean that as a compliment. There's a knowing silliness to Aquaman that helps gloss over its sometimes-shaky CG and over-complicated mythology, and a willingness to go for broke that keeps us guessing about what we'll witness next.
When a petulant Patrick Wilson, as King Orm, barks about becoming an "Ocean Master," you don't need to know what that means to laugh at the ridiculousness. When the camera soars over a glittering underwater realm and settles on an enormous octopus pounding away at the drums, you don't need any context at all to be amused by the spectacle.
But the longer we spend in this world, the less special it starts to feel—and at 143 minutes, Aquaman keeps us there for quite a while. As the third-act battle pummeled me into numbness, I felt quite ready to leave Atlantis and return home.
Still, more of it works than not. Jason Momoa's Aquaman already had a proper big-screen introduction in last year's Justice League, but he turns out to be even better flying solo. The Arthur Curry we see in Aquaman is still a boisterous bro, but a slightly sweeter, more relaxed one who enjoys pounding back beers with his dad (Temuera Morrison) and playfully bickering with his ally/love interest, Mera (Amber Heard).
That recalibration makes him an ideal hero to steer the weird, wild beast that is Aquaman. Like its hero, the film, directed by James Wan, is sincere without being self-seriousness, and funny without tipping over into self-parody. It also shares his roll-with-the-punches attitude, which is probably the only way to serve up visions like a seahorse-riding battalion without eliciting a fatal level of skepticism.
Particularly when those CG seahorses are only kind of convincing. Aquaman's visuals are less Jungle Book photo-realism, more Lisa Frank razzle-dazzle. Sure, the details might not look quite right (that's not how human hair and skin move underwater), but who cares when you're staring at an enormous tentacled crab monster voiced by Julie Andrews?
And who has time to worry when that creature is about to attack? Aquaman hops so quickly from continent to continent and ocean to ocean that I hardly had time to digest the plot—which seems to suit this movie just fine. Aquaman offers plenty of intricate mythology, mostly through flashbacks and info-dump monologues, but doesn't mind if you prefer Arthur's tl;dr versions of events: "Something, something, trident."
Even in the midst of all that globe-trotting, though, Aquaman is wise enough to ground its standard end-of-the-world stakes in personal connections: between Arthur's parents, between Arthur and each of them, between Arthur and Mera. Some of the best moments of the film come when no superhero-ing is occurring at all, as when Arthur watches Mera learn about roses in Sicily.
The film has a less steady hand when it comes to its villains. Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) starts out strong but feels increasingly superfluous as the film goes on, and probably would've been better saved for a sequel. Meanwhile, Orm feels curiously underdeveloped—it's only Wilson's performance that keeps him from being a total snooze.
But those are forgivable flaws, easy enough to overlook when the rest of the movie is having so much fun—and Aquaman is all about fun. It may not be the deepest movie we've seen this year, or the smartest or the timeliest. (Though there is some mention of our tendency to pollute. Sorry, ocean kingdoms.)
Instead, like its hero, it's the kind of film that surveys the strangeness in front of it, flashes a smile, and dives right in. And if it stays in the water a bit too long—well, I'd still come back for a sequel.
Topics Comics
