★★★

Marvel’s latest is…well, it’s a lot. There’s a lot to like about The Marvels but a lot more besides. That’s not to say the Nia DaCosta space epic isn’t heaps of fun. It is. Bolstered by a terrific central ensemble, The Marvels is heartfelt and funny and just the right side of zany. But it’s also a very much overblown beast and surprisingly uninvolving. What with Marvel’s ongoing determination to lather all of recent projects in computer generated excess, a failure of the plot to tether itself to anything especially material rather nulls the impact. Fans will, no doubt, find much to enjoy, to mull over and dissect. As for the more casually invested, the pleasures here are rather transitory. There’s a reason so much of Marvel’s once billion-dollar bankability now feels a distant box office memory.