Critic Reviews

It’s a putting-the-band-together origins movie, executed with great fun and energy.

A seriously satisfying superhero movie, one that, rife with lines like "the stench of your fear is making my soldiers hungry," actually feels like the earnest comic books of our squandered youth.

The movie is no cheat. It’s a tasty franchise delivery system that kicks a certain series back into gear.

A better effort than Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and a worthy follow-up to runaway hit Wonder Woman, Justice League does the DC icons proud with some high-profile additions and a strong if unspectacular effort full of fun character moments.

If the film is a potluck stew of half-cooked notions, it's at least a tasty one.

Because the film goes in so many tonal and narrative directions, it feels like a grab bag anyone can reach into and fish around in for something to their personal tastes, from dramatic themes to offhand banter, from mindless pummel-fests to thoughtful conversations about heroic responsibility. Justice League isn’t an entirely coherent film, but it’s certainly an egalitarian one.

It’s messy and flawed but it still offers enough entertainment value (mostly thanks to its likable characters) to make it worthwhile.

The joints show, and the cuts are sometimes awkward — there was clearly a longer, more d-r-a-w-n o-u-t version of this at some point — but what’s left after the cutting is fun and engaging enough, and it’s all anchored by terrific lead performances. There were even times when (gasp) it moved me.

Justice League does remain fun as it unravels, an upgrade from every other DC flick. Yet a movie intended as the culmination of DC lore instead feels like just another sequel set-up.

Justice League is a decent crowdpleaser, preferable in every way to the candy-assed cynicism of Suicide Squad. But sometimes shadows need to fall to show us what to be scared of. In the end, this all-star team-up is too afraid of the dark to work its way into our dreams.