According to Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, The Flash is the greatest superhero movie he’s ever seen. To that, all we can say is that he clearly hasn’t watched very many of them. Far from a masterpiece and just shy of being a disaster akin to 2015's Fantastic Four, the Scarlet Speedster’s first solo outing races into theaters as a jumbled, tedious, and poorly executed piece which has only a handful of saving graces.
The first is director Andy Muschietti. Doing his best with Christina Hodson’s juvenile, largely incomprehensible screenplay (the latter may be more down to reshoots than whatever she originally intended), he delivers some fantastic action scenes and a portrayal of Barry Allen’s incredible abilities which is truly a delight to watch unfold. An early scene sees the Fastest Man Alive race from Central City to Gotham, and the way it’s executed is a vast improvement over what's come before.
Unfortunately, the filmmaker is let down by visual effects that appear to have travelled in time from the mid-2000s. As Barry leaps into action to save several babies falling from a collapsing hospital wing, we see infants who would look more at home as part of a PlayStation 3 cutscene. The fact any studio would happily put that into theaters strongly suggests Warner Bros. reached a point where they decided enough money had been spent on the troubled project and bad VFX would simply do. Oh, and if you’re someone who argued that She-Hulk looked like a video game character, just wait until those widely discussed cameos come along; the Speed Force is like paying a visit to an unofficial Madame Tussauds museum featuring plastic dolls someone has made using wax brewed in their bathtub. It's embarrassing, disappointing, and more than a little ghoulish.
Despite all of that, Muschietti proves himself a perfect fit for The Brave and the Bold with a phenomenal take on not one, but two versions of the Dark Knight. Ben Affleck doesn’t get much to do, but what we do see from him proves that the director has a strong grasp on how to portray Batman on screen. The returning Michael Keaton is superb and, while he’s obvious nostalgia bait, it’s impossible to give a damn when even at 71, he’s kicking just as much ass as he did back in the late 80s and early 90s. From the moment Bruce shows up eating spaghetti with a comically long beard to the subtle hints that being Batman is what this guy lives for as he flies into action against General Zod’s army, Keaton’s work will leave you grinning from ear to ear.
The Flash’s final saving grace is Sasha Calle’s Supergirl. While her role is smaller than expected, she’s terrific from start to finish and should 100% be the DCU’s Woman of Tomorrow. Even though she isn’t given enough time to really sink her teeth into the character, Calle’s haunted Kara is a force to be reckoned with and a joy to watch.
Back to the bad, though, and it’s not until Batman shows up that The Flash becomes watchable. Aside from a few chuckles (Barry's weird confession to Wonder Woman that he's a 28-year-old virgin isn't one of them) and some great superhero visuals, the first hour of this movie is, frankly, unbearable. With the hero stranded in the past alongside his younger self, it feels like Hodson’s intention was to show us how much happier and normal the 18-year-old would have been with his mother in his life. Unfortunately, that translates to Barry being an irritating, insufferable simpleton, giggling like a stoner and generally being one of the worst characters to ever grace this genre.
Whatever Ezra Miller was going for does not work, and they make a strong case as two versions of the same superhero as to why Zack Snyder dropped the ball when he cast them as Barry. Not believable as a superhero, irritating as a goofy kid, and only actually worthy of praise when the movie gets serious (they deserve a lot of credit for ensuring we buy into the hero’s determination to save his mother), this needs to be the last time they play the character. Elsewhere in the cast, Kiersey Clemons is wasted - we’re not sure why she even bothered to appear - and Michael Shannon blatantly phones it in for a thankless role as Zod. He's thrown in seemingly for the hell of it, and this attempt to capitalise on the DCEU's history by revisiting the events of another of its mostly okay movies in Man of Steel largely falls flat. We revelled in reliving the events of The Avengers in Avengers: Endgame and it felt like a big deal; this re-do, on the other hand, just leaves us wondering if Shannon was the only one who answered Warner Bros.' call.
The Flash only really comes together when the focus is on Barry’s mission to save his mom. The Multiverse concept is (mostly) explained well and the reasoning behind why his actions have changed reality to such a large extent leaves us with much to think about. Unfortunately, a tacked-on ending and a failure to dive into the Dark Flash concept beyond a surface level largely overshadow that. Regardless of whether you go in knowing about the movie’s original conclusion, removing it leaves a bad taste when it comes to the fate of certain characters, while the way the Flashpoint concept is used here feels like a watered-down, largely inconsequential version of the comic book it borrows so many ideas from.
Ultimately, The Flash seemingly couldn’t decide between being a sprawling Multiversal epic or a personal story for its lead and decided to try both with neither fully working. There are some solid ideas, but they aren't well-executed and, when you take out Keaton and Calle, you're left with a lot of recycled time-travel tropes, a lead who only shines when their character is miserable, and a movie which brings nothing truly extraordinary to the table. It's average. It's okay. It has a few good moments. Folks, it's a DCEU movie.
Far from the greatest superhero movie ever made and not quite among the worst, The Flash is still another mediocre effort from the DCEU with appalling VFX and a messy story that the excellent Michael Keaton and Sasha Calle alone are unable to save. [⭐⭐.5]