There is a passage of about 20 minutes in Kenneth Branagh's superhero epic when the story's two worlds collide and the film takes a sideways leap into an enjoyably daft comedy.
Up to that point, it's a pretty derivative sword'n'thunderbolt extravaganza in which hothead princeling Thor (Chris Hemsworth), having displeased his
mighty father, Odin (Anthony Hopkins), by warring with the Frost Giants, is cast out of the kingdom of Asgard.
Hurtling through darkness, Thor crash-lands in the New Mexico desert, where astrophysicist Natalie Portman has been watching the skies in the hope of some celestial marvel.
Well, she's got one now, though it takes her a while to understand what to do with this blond Norse hunk who goes into a pet shop to ask for a horse?
The rub between old world and new strikes up some lovely comic sparks - ably abetted by Portman's pert assistant (Kat Dennings) - though it's not long before it returns to the dull power struggle raging back in Asgard, where Thor's brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is making a royal pest of himself.
Perhaps Marvel Studios hired Branagh to lend a bit of Shakespearean gravitas, but such a mission is well-nigh impossible amid the digital bombast filling the screen - and it would be wasted on this script in any case.
3/5
(M), 114 minutes
