Shallow, uninspired and indulgently inconsequential, WHAT IF…THOR WERE AN ONLY CHILD? takes our favourite Asgardian and amplifies the oafish arrogance we only briefly glimpsed in the movie to the point where you have to wonder how in the Nine Realms he’s still worthy of Mjolnir.
When his parents take separate vacations, Thor decides to use his unsupervised time to head to Midgard to part-ay. P, A, R, T – Y? Who knows, and frankly who cares in this thirty-minute sophomoric romp through the Marvel Cinematic Universe (except not, because apart from an appearance from Captain Marvel, there’s no sign of the other OG Avengers).
Stupid, goofy and uninspired, this is basically just one big long version of Thor being Eric Cartman, even down to its own version of “but mooooooom!”. People were surprised that Marvel was able to coax Natalie Portman back for a fourth THOR movie but the real miracle is that she’s lending her voice to this turgid fratboy comedy.
Easily the most disposable of the WHAT IF…? series so far, it sums up everything you might have feared the series would be. There’s no insightful, clever subversion of established canon in service of a greater point here, just a tiresomely relentless parade of “Who’s That?” from the Cosmic MCU to fill the screen and the oh-so-empty runtime. Not even the presence of Seth Green’s Howard The Duck and Kat Denning’s Darcy can liven things up and, once again, it’s the non-original voice cast who let the side down although it has to be said even Hemsworth struggles with the subtle art of voice acting and often sounds like someone doing a bad impression of himself.
Perhaps sensing how weak WHAT IF…THOR WERE AN ONLY CHILD? really is, this one actually ends on a deliberate cliff-hanger, albeit one entirely unconnected to the story which precedes it as what looks like “Infinity Stone Ultron” makes his entrance through a dimensional portal. It’s a smart move, too, because you don’t need to be an Asgardian Witch of Frigga’s calibre to have foreseen viewership falling away after this crass campus comedy.
4/10
