THE FLASH– 2 STARS

When the well-advertised Michael Keaton arrives in The Flash, things settle down where his senior citizen Bruce Wayne is now cooking pasta in a busted-up kitchen after a scrum with a pair of intruders. Those perpetrators are two Barry Allens, both played by Ezra Miller, separated by years and timeline boundaries. The semi-retired Caped Crusader of yesteryear is attempting to explain the Multiverse to his frazzled twin guests.

LESSON #1: MULTIVERSE FOR DUMMIES– Bruce bends an uncooked spaghetti noodle to explain a strained divergence of two timelines and stacks them to show intersections instead of parallel paths. That seems simple, but then he presents the bowl of cooked pasta next–swirling every which way– to be a model of the multiverse. Piling on with continued dry wit, Bruce slops marinara sauce on top to represent an indivisible “hot mess.” All of it is a “crapshoot” metaphor that bangs Bruce’s point home about the unpredictable and uncorrectable dangers of the multiverse. He’s (my) Batman, and he ain’t wrong. 

Unwittingly (or is it, after one of the worst post-production journeys a movie has ever completed), Bruce’s parlay of wisdom matches the macro view of The Flash itself. For as much as all the talk of portending fate leads to dashing heroics in the extravagant summer blockbuster, one can slow their roll, step back, and see plenty of the hot mess and crapshoot Keaton was talking about in character. Unpacking The Flash can be like trying to sort those sticky spaghetti noodles and rinsing off the wrong sauce.

In a thrilling hospital rescue sequence, The Flash welcomes a no-longer-a-rookie Barry Allen (Miller) in working with the Justice League’s as their self-described “janitor” and climbing the office ladder in the Central City forensic crime lab. Barry’s greater hope than the glory of saving innocent lives would be to prove his father Henry’s (Ron Livington, replacing Billy Crudup) innocence from the charges of murdering his wife and Barry’s mother Nora (Maribel Verdú of Y Tu Mama Tambien). Away from the court proceedings and costumed shenanigans, Barry has caught the caring eye of truth-seeking journalist Iris West (Kiersey Clemons of Hearts Beat Loud) and the attraction is mutual.

Through a moment of dumb luck, Barry discovers that running fast enough with the Speed Force can turn back time– only several minutes at first and then days and years. With this new ability, The Flash becomes fixated with going back in time to prevent Nora’s murder. In doing so in one bold attempt, Barry gets his present-day self trapped a decade behind in the past with his younger, pre-powers self. Barry may have saved his mother, but the changes to history (several humorous in the pop culture sector and many not-so-humorous in the peril department) happen at the onset of the conquering arrival of General Zod (Michael Shannon) during the events of 2013’s Man of Steel.

Held back by a bout of lost powers, an unassembled Justice League, and, most crucially, no sign of any Kal-El/Clark Kent existing in this universe to confront Zod as historically necessary, it’s up to The Flash to stave off Kryptonian invasion and humanity’s defeat. The substitutions of his inexperienced duplicate, a different Batman (Keaton), and a liberated Kara Zor-El (The Young and the Restless cast member Sasha Calle making her feature film debut)-- Superman’s cousin– will have to do for the main Barry Allen. Just like these hodgepodge characters thrust into action, The Flash is in over its head trying to contain all of the weight, destiny, and importance in one movie.

LESSON #2: NOT EVERY PROBLEM HAS A SOLUTION– Flash’s mother says this exact semi-rhetorical line when Barry was a kid and two Batmen warn their apprentice hero every chance they had about irresponsible attempts to change time. Matching the far superior Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (talk about poor timing at the box office), an education is needed as to how some fates are inevitable and “some scars make us who we are.” Fixing one perceived broken thing can destroy any number of other things, and Barry is forced to realize that by relinquishing unanswerable desire and impossible prospects even if they have sorrowful results.

For many walking into this tentpole movie, the presence of Ezra Miller is a situation matching Lesson #2. Seeing the completed film now after a demolition derby of reshoots and delays, a discerning viewer filled with even mild speculation will be wondering what about The Flash was punched up, was excised from principal photography, and who oversaw the changes which were deemed necessary between It series director Andy Muschietti and the finagling Warner Bros. studio who hired him. Whatever occurred, the bulk of what would have been its twists, turns, and surprises have been exposed and over-marketed to death to make up for the gears of gossip.

To their credit, Ezra Miller is not this movie’s problem. The 30-year-old’s default setting is still one of manic energy fizzing with loquacious charm– one that is multiplied with two versions hanging around in Muschietti’s film. Even with a manageable amount of motor-mouthed zingers, this can be a daft and overfilling dose of Ezra. In spite of that and with great surprise, Miller shows a capacity for culling forth tear-inducing waterworks to amplify Barry Allen’s emotions. The actor works well conveying maturity replacing naïve coolness in both real and sped-up time. 

Nevertheless, there is no way and– thanks to these positive results in the titular role– no reason to scrub Ezra Miller from The Flash. Folks need to live with that outcome and, if they so must, latch onto other sources of inspiration and excitement in the movie. That’s where the quicksand matching the time-draining slurry of special effects (more on that in a moment) shows that those next good guy bedrocks only have so much strength and value. 

Michael Keaton’s return to the cape and cowl is its own stupendously wonderful thing that will send the throes of middle-aged audience members into instant giddiness, but he is merely a clever and high profile plot convenience to nudge Barry’s arc along. On a lesser scale of sizzle, Sasha Calle has a very intriguing possible arc with Supergirl presented as a freed prisoner of Earth now thrust into the position of defending the place that treated her poorly. That worthy stratum goes unexplored in favor of her necessary muscle as the pugilistic heavy artillery for the battlefield climax. True exploration would require The Flash to slow down literally instead of only doing so figuratively for show.

LESSON #3: WAS THAT FAST ENOUGH FOR YOU?-- At the end of one action sequence presented in slow-motion, one of the Barrys chimes in to bystanders that “You should have seen that in slo-mo!” Well, we did and we do– over and over again. Sure, there are only so many ways to coherently “film” the Scarlet Speedster moving faster than the speed of light, but the script and VFX teams do not offer much eye-catching variety or clarity for that matter. The surrounding crackles can be cool at times, but when the Speed Force is on, The Flash shows its wiggly and wobbly self. Extremely substandard special effects smudge everyone down to the depths of the uncanny valley where The Polar Express still rides. Surely, effects in 2023 are better than the dregs of the 00s.

This movie was better off not slamming the accelerator through its narrative entanglements to the next action showdown. Miller and company are best in The Flash when they are not doing something super and addressing the bigger themes about their conditions and consequences. You feel the movie’s melodrama hit most not when it zips by you with a rush of hot air but in stillness when it wrestles with its proverbial speed demons.