Natalie Portman stars as an astrophysicist. (Zade Rosenthal)
“Thor” is as serviceable as a hammer, and about as subtle. Director Kenneth Branagh whips up a tempest of spirits from the vasty deep, zooming characters through the universe without spaceships, filling the screen with clanking metal and staging a smackdown on a disco bridge that changes colors like the dance floor in “Saturday Night Fever.”
There’s plenty of smash, thunder and brawl for the kids. But in taking a bit of Hulk and a bit of Superman while re-imagining Excalibur as a hammer, “Thor” amounts to putting new horns on old ideas. And the screenplay sounds like the lyrics of Spinal Tap.
Thor (charmlessly played by a slab of muscle called Chris Hemsworth) is a Norse prince from another planet with the looks of Bjorn Borg but the temper of John McEnroe.
He lives in what appears to be a giant brass pipe organ in the exurbs of the universe, where his one-eyed father, the king (Anthony Hopkins), raised him alongside his dark-haired, shifty-eyed brother Loki (a watery Tom Hiddleston).
I’m not sure why I felt Loki might not be all that pleased to spend his life bowing before the awesomeness of his sibling. But if Branagh had placed a neon light blinking VILLAIN over his head, it would have been the same movie, except slightly wittier.
A.D. 965 turns out to be the critical year in Nordic mythology. The year of the first ABBA joke? Approximately, but also the time when, back on Earth, Thor’s daddy (Fathor?) defeated his archenemies, the Frost Giants, oaken blue dudes who look like thug Na’vis.
A truce has prevailed ever since. But after the Frost Giants interrupt Thor’s coronation ceremony, a gilt-edged affair that looks like it was styled by the design team of Cecil B. DeMille and Donald Trump, the blond hothead disobeys the old man and jets through space to try to hammer some sense into the enemy clan. Loki does much smirking. Keep your eye on this one.
The King strips Thor of his superpowers and exiles him from the planet, though he also tosses overboard the family’s mighty magical hammer so that Thor can find it and get his powers back.
Meanwhile, in New Mexico, an astrophysicist (Natalie Portman) and her sidekicks (Stellan Skarsgard, Kat Dennings) are investigating strange weather phenomena when Thor drops in for a visit.
The drab attempts at love scenes between Portman and Hemsworth amount to “Me Tarzan, you Jane” chatter, and when Thor goes flexing around town he is simply Hulk with a better complexion. When Thor’s four friends visit from back home to pass along a message, they turn out to be the dullest quartet since Nickelback.
Nor do the effects mark new a standard. There is a slight whiff of bargain shopping in the production, and the look seems like state of the art for 2003. Unlike the “Iron Man” movies, “Thor” is almost entirely without wit. Thor says, “Hammer! Hammer!” and someone replies, “Yeah, we can tell you’re hammered.”
Other gags include the hero getting knocked over by a car (twice) and knocked out by a Taser wielded by a college student. Yet when it’s time for Thor to storm the compound where his hammer sticks out of the earth waiting for him like Excalibur, he duly whips every super-trained soldier in sight. You can’t have it both ways, guys. He can’t be a fish out of water when you need a cheap joke and a mighty machine when you want action. And why does Thor burst into a puppy shop to demand, “I need a horse” when he’s already been getting around in cars? For a god, this guy sounds a lot like Animal from “The Muppet Show.”
The ripping outer-space fights are the main attraction, and they’re mostly entertaining, though not in a way that will make you feel good about yourself. How much pleasure should an adult derive from contemplation of a villain, wearing a black polyurethane motorcycle helmet with two horns that curve back like bumblebee antennae, who actually cries, “Ha HA!” as he grapples with our hero on that disco bridge? In moments of weakness, Thor says things like, “I need sustenance!” So do I, buddy.
kyle.smith@nypost.com