Blue Beetle: Movie Review

Cast: Xolo Maridueña, George Lopez, Susan Sarandon, Bruna Marquezine
Director: Ángel Manuel Soto

There's a lot of heart in Blue Beetle, the latest DC superhero film outing.

But there's also a lot of formulaic fare as well in this immigrant-survival tale that's dressed up as an origin story of the Blue Beetle, and its central hero Jaime Reyes.

Returning from college full of hope, Jaime Reyes (an amiable and earnest but borderline bland Maridueña) finds life is not as good as he expected - his father's had had a heart attack, the family business has gone broke and they're about to lose their rental. 

When he stumbles into the life of Jenny Kord (Marquezine), he accidentally fuses with an ancient scarab that's been hunted for decades by the scheming Victoria Kord (Sarandon, wickedly described as Cruella Kardashian at one point) who's usurped the family business for nefarious means.

Suddenly, gifted Iron Man-like Superhero powers (complete with an automated AI system), Reyes finds his family targeted and his very existence in danger.

Blue Beetle makes a good fist of its family ethos - and its examination of the Mexican migrant lifestyle. 

From the rich and poor divide to the impact of gentrification and the onward march of technology at whatever cost, there's much here that makes Blue Beetle relatable enough fare - without just following a Latino hero narrative throughout. 

Some solid early world-building provides the stakes which are infinitely more grounded and personal than the usual world-ending fare which comes so easily to the superhero genre as a whole. But where Blue Beetle falls down is in the taking of some of the familiar tropes and throwing them into the mix.

A rote CGI-led smash and grab final fight is nothing more than two robots fighting each other like Transformers cast-offs and the origin story is nothing spectacular or different to what's gone before.

Yet Blue Beetle occasionally transcends some of that to present a superhero film that has subtitles and a blast of cultural infusion in among the chaos that feels stretched out at times. The stakes are less high in this tale than is usual, and the lens is firmly planted on a community oft ignored (both in front and behind the camera).

The story is inherently one of survival, of immigrants coming out of the woodwork to do the right thing no matter what the cost, and much of the subtext sparkles through the usual CGI trappings and bombast that heads up the film's denouement and mid-film confrontations.

Ultimately, while it ends with a direct bait for a sequel that may never happen now the DC Universe is being rebooted, most of what Blue Beetle does has an anarchic and approachable charm as it tells a Latino family tale that just happens to be a superhero story.