Blue Beetle starts out with a decent idea. Rather than focusing on billionaires and gods and kings and super soldiers, the hero of this narrative is instead a Mexican American first-generation college student with undocumented family members about to lose their rented home to gentrification. Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) is someone who really has something to lose—and something to gain—via superhero empowerment.
That potential, though, is almost entirely squandered. Jaime’s family is loud and loving as per ethnic Hollywood default, but the movie never makes them much more than stereotypes. Instead, it tosses screen time at Jaime’s impressively sparkless relationship with billionaire-with-a-tragic-backstory Jenny Kord (Bruna Marquezine), and then at his equally uninvolving relationship with a blue symbiote alien supersuit, which bonds to his back and nervous system.
We somehow, over two hours, learn next to nothing about this blue whatsit super symbiote suit, except that it is all-powerful, which means it’s constantly filibustering and claiming to have to reboot, because otherwise it would just beat up all the bad guys and end the film in a blast of blue light and indifferent CGI. Eventually the supersuit does, and the film does, and the CGI does, but only after Jaime has yelled at it a whole lot—demonstrating, if you were wondering, that a guy standing and screaming at his own silly outfit is neither dramatic nor visually absorbing.
The good news is that there is a recent idiosyncratic, smart superhero movie about family and togetherness. It’s called Encanto. I’d suggest watching it and skipping Blue Beetle entirely. PG-13, 127 min.