"The Flash" - Review

Crime lab technician Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) is a super-fast superhero known as "The Flash". Desperate to clear the name of his father Henry (Ron Livingston), who has long been in prison for the murder of his mother Nora (Maribel Verdu), Barry throws himself into his works. When he figures out that he can move fast enough to travel in time, he decides to prevent his mother's death from ever happening. However, these efforts backfire and alter the timeline, forcing Barry to team up with his younger self, in order to figure out how to fix things...

The story around the making of this movie has been a trainwreck not seen since the days of "Fantfourstic", and I think everybody following it is longing for a documentary/fly-on-the-wall tell all about everything which went so deeply, intrinsically south. Changes in directors, an 8/9 year development cycle, reshoots, connections to a truly dire, wet fart of an "extended universe" (our titular character showing up in one of the most cynical, messiest, compellingly unpleasant watches in recent memory, only adding to that movie's litany of problems) and the... "antics" of its lead have made for a movie doomed on arrival.
Don't get me wrong: this movie is pure product, and a reprehensible exercise in the current trends of cannibalising franchises, names and "IP" (probably best exemplified by the metaphor of Barry Allen breaking apart and vandalising a Michael Keaton Batman suit in order to make his own new costume, complete with close ups and lingering shots of it beforehand), complete with hammering of that excellent Danny Elfman score whenever Michael Keaton is on screen in an attempt to stir some sort of nastalgic high...
However, the movie is more frustrating than actively a trainwreck, in the way something like "Fantfourstic" and "Morbius" were. The opening is a key area in this: on the one hand it is some of the most nightmarish, horrifying, atrocious, rubbery CGI horror babies screaming from the void and doomed to loom and leer at me from my the deepest recesses of hellish sleep paralysis. But on the other hand, it's part of a genuinely rip-roaring, silly little adventure where our hero has to rescue a bunch of babies from being smeared on the pavement because a hospital is collapsing and the maternity ward has a hole in the wall. That kind of thing you want from a Flash movie, right down to his calorie counter being low so him having to stop to grab a burrito halfway through. The rest of the movie is at its best when it's doing that kind of thing, being silly, carefree, fun, it feels natural.
But then the plot and the tomfuckery kick in.
The 2 biggest load stones around the movie's neck are its corporate mandated profiteering, and its lead.
Occasionally Ezra Miller will actually be alright in the part, especially in parts of the time travel plot where they have to interact with themselves, showing a charm and goofiness and awkward weirdness which works for Barry Allen. But then, sometimes in the same scene, the line delivery and acting will be flat, bland, and actually atrocious in parts. It's particularly noticable early on... It's a fascinating study in contrasts for the most part, and also a shame that this is the most prominent movie with a non-binary lead in it...
Then comes the plot and CGI product.
Michael Keaton shows up, as has been plastered over the announcements and internet, as Batman once again. Oh boy does the movie want you to know it! Every appearance is punctuated with hammering of the Danny Elfman Batman theme, there are lingering shots of the suits he uses, and as fun as Keaton is in the role - okay, why? The movie makes hay about its time travel plot and its efforts to get Barry back to the modern world, and almost seems fun and interesting (the one who knows what's going on loses their powers, and thus has to guide an idiot younger version of themselves to the plot), only for it to have more of the atrocious CGI, this time that of the corpses of George Reeves, Christopher Reeve and Adam West, as well as terrible deepfake CGI versions of Helen Slater (but no Brandon Routh, poor bastard, though I suppose he dodged a bullet here) and Nicolas Cage fighting a "Thandanarian Snare Beast" (a joke which, sure, is funny to those of us in the know, but here? Jesus Christ it's out of place...) - all to the admittedly quite interesting visual idea of worlds literally colliding.

A highlight, for the 10 minutes she is allowed to be on screen, is Supergirl, played by Sasha Calle with a cool haircut. In her limited screentime she's allowed to be a more heroic, and majestic figure than Cavill was in his shitty scripts, and she deserves a better movie.

I hope she goes far.
The humour and bouncy, interesting parts are laboured by a mixed performance from its lead, and the knowledge that this was a corporate obligation (but we couldn't get our "Batgirl" movie... funny that) and another Warner Bros corporate cum-fest...
I hope that the majority of the artists involved get allowed to make art (I'm always happy to ahve Ron Livingston in things, and am maybe the last defender of "It: Chapter 2"), and wish them all of the best. In another universe (hah) there would be a fun Flash movie...