Bemused at the Movies

I am not a comic-book movie person. It's not that I don't like fantasy, it's just that I have this arcane idea that it ought to make sense in its own terms: self-consistent, not a gross insult to the myths it sprang from -- things like that. Nonetheless, I sort of enjoyed THOR. It was so silly that no one could ask more of it than it gave. It would be like asking a two-year-old to do calculus.

The silliness begins with the cast. Asgard, home of the Norse gods, is now politically correct enough to include an Oriental warrior, a female warrior, and a Black keeper-of-the-bridge to other realms. The bridge itself appears to be made of glitter-covered Legos. Asgard, too, glitters, made up of gold-colored abstract buildings designed by some far-past ancestor of Frank Gehry. All this is rather sweet, in a frivolous sort of way. Also sweet is the movie's rather Victorian premise: That an insensitive and loose-cannon guy can be saved by the love of a good woman. The guy is Thor, and the woman is a mortal who is supposed to be an astrophysicist but who records her data in spiral notebooks by drawing little pictures of planets.

So why did I enjoy this movie? Not for the plot, which mostly involves fighting: Norse gods versus frost giants, Thor versus Loki, various hapless humans versus each other. But there are fun touches throughout. When Thor's hammer falls to Earth and is stuck there, nobody can draw it off the stone it landed on (move over, King Arthur). The locals set up a contest; people arrive in pick-up trucks; someone is selling hot dogs. That kind of thing kept me amused, even though ten minutes after I left the theater, most of the movie had vanished from my head. No loss. There's always another comic-book movie coming.