'Furiosa' neglects 'Fury Road' appeal, grows silly and lives on the pompous side

I'm on the small island of folks who didn't "get" this movie.

Expectations can do numbers on a movie. For example, I absolutely adore George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, which featured terrific turns from Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron. Everything about it-from the signature special effects to the bristling action-hit the nail on the head of any expectation a fan of the series carried into the theater. At the same time, I didn’t beg for another round. Alas, studios do what they do and directors overeat at the buffet most of the time.

The movie came out the same year Miller turned 70; his latest addition to the Mad Max enterprise, Furiosa, comes as he nears 80.

Is it any good? After a long wait for reasons that include procrastination and a lack of genuine desire to rush out and see it, I pressed play on Furiosa last week and finished it after a few tries. As in “tries,” I mean the amount of rounds necessary to finish the movie. What I can tell you that is this one took the previous movie’s blueprint, blew it up, and remodeled it upon something else entirely.

Maybe I missed the other lead actors or didn’t find myself blown away by the usually very good Anya Taylor Joy and Chris Hemsworth. There’s a chance that the latter overdid the breaking bad idea, adopting a wily accent and chewing more scenery than building a runway for performance. Joy is stunning in whatever she pops up in, but here it’s a one-note endeavor that never leaves broiling intensity.

The tale of the tape centers around Theron’s heroine from Fury Road, showing her point of view from a very young age through her first grasp of power. Hemsworth’s awful and brutal gang takes a pound of her family’s flesh, and she gets her revenge by slow-playing the hand and letting another gang take on the one she’s after, doing some of the heavy lifting for her.

It’s not hard to piece the rest of it together. A tip of the cap for how they handle the fate of Hemsworth’s Dr. Dementus, the farthest thing from an actual medical practitioner and someone who doesn’t understand the odds between a small army and a legion of foes. What happens to him is unconventional and darkly hilarious, but the entire film left me wanting more.

Impressive in certain areas and overabundant in others, Furiosa takes an intriguing premise and hits the snooze button. Granted, there are action scenes that dazzle and some climactic tension near the end, but all in all a movie that promised more than it can deliver.

Rotten Tomatoes would disagree with me, as it posts a sharp 90% fresh rating. However, the box office receipt would agree with the notion that few to no one asked for an origin tale of a role that one actress made near legendary. A sequel with Theron and Hardy would have done BONKERS at the box office and film critic table.

As is, Furiosa underwhelms. It takes the originality of Fury Road and turns it into a silly, overly pompous clown show. The humor becomes more obvious than dry, and even the level of brutality is soft for this film series. It ended, and I quickly switched to something else. That following film was better.