Film Review: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is carried by star performances
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: a visually dazzling romp
★★★★☆
You’d expect to be visually dazzled by a film titled (12A), and the team behind the latest Marvel superhero outing doesn’t disappoint.
The film opens with a bang, as Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) — surgeon, superhero and master of the mystic arts — does battle with a ferocious demon to save America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), a young woman with the power to navigate the multiverse.
Determined to protect America at all costs, Doctor Strange calls upon his fellow Avenger Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), only to discover that Wanda — aka the Scarlet Witch — also craves America’s powers, and will stop at nothing to possess them...
A veteran of the films from the mid-Noughties, director Sam ‘ ’ Raimi is an inspired choice to helm a movie that is chock-a-block with spells, mysticism and a villainess who is ‘a being of unfathomable magic’ who wants nothing less than to enslave the entire multiverse.
The plot itself doesn’t bear too much scrutiny, but the story is effectively a series of spectacular action sequences, and Raimi does a terrific job of keeping all the elements moving forward at a cracking pace even as the wheels threaten to come off.Â
What holds it all together is a superb performance from Elizabeth Olsen, who portrays the Scarlet Witch as an unusually sympathetic villainess who is willing to tear down and rebuild reality for the purest of motives.Â
While Olsen dominates proceedings, Benedict Cumberbatch is reliably dry and self-contained as the egotistical Doctor, and has fun with the fact that the Doctor is notorious for his arrogance no matter what universe he finds himself in.
Visually inventive throughout, the movie even offers an audacious sequence in which rival sorcerers do battle with spells made manifest as Classical overtures.
(cinema release)
