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NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, November 10th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: the first big movie of the holiday season arrives in theaters this weekend.

EICHER: Marvel Studios used to have the most reliable track record in Hollywood for churning out blockbusters. But lately its superhero films have been getting lackluster reviews and lower-than-hoped-for box-office returns.

BROWN: Will the studio get out of its rut with its new film The Marvels? Here’s Arts and Culture editor, Collin Garbarino

COLLIN GARBARINO: The latest film out of Marvel Studios, The Marvels, features three cosmically powered female superheroes: Captain Marvel, aka Carol Danvers, played by Brie Larson; Ms. Marvel, aka Kamala Khan, played by Iman Vellani; and Monica Rambeau, who’s still workshopping her codename, played by Teyonah Parris.

KAMALA KHAN: We’re a team?

MONICA RAMBEAU: No, no. We’re not a team.

CAROL DANVERS: We’re not a team.

Let me begin by saying that as I was walking into the theater, my expectations for this movie were pretty low. I didn’t like the Captain Marvel movie when it came out in 20-19, and I still rank it as either the second or third worst movie in the franchise. I also wasn’t a big fan of last year’s Disney Plus series that introduced us to Kamala Khan. In both, the studio got a little preachy.

That said, and I almost hate to admit it, but I actually enjoyed The Marvels.

DANVERS: What is happening to me?

At the beginning of the movie, each of our heroines is doing her own thing. Carol is serving as a sort of galactic peacekeeper in her self-imposed exile in deep space, Monica is working alongside Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury as one of his scientists, and the teenaged Kamala is in her bedroom doodling in a notebook, daydreaming about what it would be like to meet Captain Marvel.

But things suddenly get weird when a Kree warlord rips a hole in space-time.

RAMBEAU: She’s entangled our light-based powers. So we switch places whenever we use them.

Monica finds herself on the distant planet Carol was exploring. Carol ends up in Kamala’s bedroom. And Kamala surprises Nick Fury by showing up on his space station.

RAMBEAU: You can absorb light. I can see it. Kamala—

DANVERS: Who’s Kamala?

KAMALA KHAN: Hi.

RAMBEAU: She can turn light into physical matter, which I have never heard of.

KHAN: I could totally show you.

EVERYONE: No!

Kamala’s thrilled to be entangled with her hero Captain Marvel, but Monica and Carol aren’t so excited. The new trio will have to figure out how to manage their malfunctioning powers before they face the villain who’s threatening the fabric of existence.

RAMBEAU: She tore a hole in space. There’s a different reality bleeding into ours.

One of the best things about The Marvels is that the script finds a credible way to rein in Captain Marvel. She’s a problematic character for any story. She’s nigh invulnerable, impossibly strong, flies at supersonic speeds, and can shoot laser beams from her fists. She’s just too powerful to be interesting. By causing her to switch places with Kamala or Monica whenever she uses her powers, the script puts a check on Carol’s ability to solve a problem with brute force.

NICK FURY: Carol Danvers. Prodigal child of the Milky Way.

DANVERS: Nick Fury. My favorite one-eyed man of intrigue.

Admittedly, the antagonist isn’t the most compelling supervillain from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but at least she isn’t just evil for evil’s sake. Like many better Marvel villains, when she complains about the state of the universe, she sort of has a point. She just has a wicked plan for solving the problems she’s identified.

DAR-BENN: Captain Marvel. The annihilator. You took everything from me. And now I’m returning the favor.

The Marvels is rated PG-13 for some brief language and sci-fi action. Other than a few bad words there’s not much that’s objectionable, making it one of Marvel’s more family-friendly installments. And at an hour and forty-five minutes, The Marvels is the shortest movie in the franchise to date. It sticks to its own story without wasting time setting up the next big Avengers crossover.

Increasingly with Marvel movies, people want to know, how much backstory do I really need to understand to enjoy this movie? Well, if you want all the origin stories, you’ll need to watch the movie Captain Marvel and the series WandaVision and Ms. Marvel. But honestly, I think you can get away with skipping them. You might not understand how everyone is related, but The Marvels does a pretty good job getting the audience up to speed on the various characters and their relationships.

One of the problems with the original Captain Marvel movie was that it took itself too seriously. I guess Marvel thought a female empowerment superhero movie needs to be earnest. This movie, however, swings in the opposite direction, offering just as much humor as action.

Iman Vellani’s Kamala Khan brings much of that humor, stealing scenes as the fangirl who made it into the big leagues. She’s especially funny when trying to play it cool. Brie Larson gets relegated to playing the straight man, and Teyonah Parris’s Monica gets saddled with the boring exposition.

At points, things get downright goofy. Some viewers will probably complain that it gets a little too goofy at times. But I prefer superhero films with a generous dose of levity. And The Marvels turns out to be a fun popcorn film to kick off the holiday movie season.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

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