Doctor Strange

Quite possibly the worst of the Marvel movies, Doctor Strange follows Benedict Cumberbatch’s Stephen Strange as he loses the use of his hands in a car accident and travels East in search of a possible cure – with the film detailing Strange’s transformation into a powerful magician (and his eventual efforts at defeating Mads Mikkelsen’s diabolical Kaecilius). Filmmaker Scott Derrickson, working from a script cowritten with Jon Spaihts and C. Robert Cargill, delivers a tedious opening hour that seems to have emerged directly from a template for comic-book-superhero origin stories, as Doctor Strange‘s excessively familiar atmosphere is compounded by an emphasis on virtually all of the beats and plot twists one has come to expect from Marvel endeavors (including a reluctant hero and an ongoing emphasis on eye-rollingly snarky instances of humor). Derrickson’s complete and total inability to draw the viewer into the deliberately-paced proceedings grows more and more problematic as time progresses, with the presence of an almost unconscionably uninvolving midsection, which revolves around Strange’s endlessly repetitive training at the hands of Tilda Swinton’s mystical Ancient One, perpetuating the movie’s arms-length vibe. (It doesn’t help, certainly, that the consistent emphasis on astral planes and mirror universes results in a lack of real-world stakes.) And although Cumberbatch is decent as the title character (and the supporting cast is filled with able performers), Doctor Strange progresses from bad to worse as it lumbers into its special-effects heavy third act – with, especially, the climactic stretch so overloaded with unconvincing, excessive computer-generated imagery that one begins counting the minutes before the credits roll. It’s ultimately apparent that Derrickson is completely out of his depth here, as Doctor Strange, for the duration of its frequently interminable running time, remains unable to wholeheartedly (or even partially) justify its very existence – with a more apt title for the picture, after all is said and done, Special Effects: The Movie.

* out of ****