Twenty-nine films into the Marvel Cinematic Universe — a playful and flexible narrative arena in theory, too often a realm of granite solemnity in practice — if you can’t mess around a little then really: Why make all that money in the first place?
In other words, the giant screaming goats hit the spot in “Thor: Love and Thunder,” which should be called “Thor: Love, Thunder, Goats, Guns N’ Roses.” The digital vessel-haulers known as Toothgrinder and Toothgnasher enjoy a modest but welcome amount of screen time in co-writer and director Taika Waititi’s aggressively nutty follow-up to “Thor: Ragnarok” (2017). That film zazzed up Thor’s corner of the MCU enough to justify more of the same. This time we’re confronted with stranger things, more outlandish detours and wilder tonal shifts. Plus four Guns N’ Roses songs, to set the mood.
It’s a strange result: half inventive, half shopworn. Pictorially Waititi’s sequel is a little bit heavy metal album cover, a little bit “H.R. Pufnstuf” — garish, bright, willfully tacky in a big-budget way. The tackiness is part of the joke in the scenes set in the coastal town of New Asgard, where Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson, sporting strapping new battle armor and a “Phantom of the Opera” sweatshirt, depending) oversees a heavily touristed attraction, full of Thor lore and merch. “Thor: Lore and Merch” also works as an alternate title.
