My Cultural Diet

I was about two-thirds of the way through Masters of the Universe when my wife got home and asked how it was. “It is what it is,” I replied, and I stand by that. It’s precisely what you’d expect from a big-budget adaptation of the classic He-Man cartoon and toy line, for better or worse. To their credit, director Travis Knight and his cast and crew never shy away from the inherent silliness of their film’s subject matter. They fully embrace the memes (hence Four Non Blondes on the soundtrack), the colorful synthwave-y visuals, the feathered hair, and even the goofy homoeroticism (like Skeletor’s obsession with He-Man’s big, long sword). I’d much rather see that approach instead of any reductionistic effort to make He-Man “gritty” or “realistic,” and it had me chuckling throughout the film. At the same time, there’s just not a lot of there there. When the story requires Masters of the Universe to set aside the jokes and attempt something a bit more serious, like an actual sincere moment between characters, that’s when the film starts to flounder, as if it doesn’t quite know what to do with itself. And that’s to say nothing of the stuff the film just sort of hand-waves away so it can get back to the flashy, CGI-powered action (which, to be fair, looks pretty great).

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