Aquaman  ★★½

CRITICISING the latest comic book film from DC studios is becoming a cliche.

Surely they can’t all be that bad?

Of course Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight films were great, Watchmen was interesting and Wonder Woman was good.

But then you’ve got the flawed, Jonah Hex, The Green Lantern, Man of Steel and Suicide Squad, and the terrible, Dawn of Justice and Justice League.

The latest entry, Aquaman, again sits in the flawed category.

There is no point criticising the over-arching story – part-human discovers they have super powers that can be harnessed in order to save their home – it’s one of the classic comic book arcs that has been done a dozen times before and will be done a dozen more.

The problems are four-fold – script, acting, visual effects and the overall presentation.

But let’s start with the good stuff.

The best thing about Aquaman is the lightness of touch with more humour overall and less darkness to the characters. That’s right, like a Marvel movie.

This is Jason Mamoa’s best performance to date. His character is easily the best written, mainly because he is allowed to just rattle off decent one-liners with flare, rather than getting bogged down in boring exposition, like several others are forced to do.

An early action sequence with Aquaman fighting a bunch of pirates in and around a submarine is well done and provides early promise. This sequence also introduces one of the villians, Manta, who is also played well by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II.

We then get the first glimpses of the underwater world with King Nereus of Atlanta, played by Dolph Lundgren, young King Orm (Patrick Wilson) and adviser/mentor Vulko (Willem Dafoe), meeting representatives of another kingdom.

One side is riding sharks and the other sea horses amid a crumbling, over-run former city that acts as a neutral meeting place.

Again this sequence shows promise. Like the submarine action, it’s contained and visually interesting.

The same is true of a later action sequence set in a coastal Italian village. Yes, it’s the usual smashing each other through walls, but the location is a welcome change to a metropolitan city and high-rises.

Finally, an attack by sea monsters from the Kingdom of the Trench on a fishing vessel is also quite spectacular and offers something a little different.

Now to the negatives.

The early effects are terrible and had me trembling about the next 135 minutes.

Nicole Kidman plays Queen Atlanna who is washed ashore after trying to escape from an arranged marriage. She and her rescuer, played by Kiwi Temeura Morrison, eventually fall in love and baby Arthur Curry (Who? He grows up to become Aquaman) is the result.

The decision to create younger versions of Kidman and Morrison is a huge mistake. It looks cheap and unrealistic and the action sequence involving Queen Atlanna looks like an ’80s video game.

This all immediately takes you out of the film and puts you in a negative ‘here we go again DC’ mindset. I could hear the critics’ knives being sharpened.

So, for the next hour or so the film is very up and down in terms of quality and interest. Amber Heard is nice to look at, but that’s where it ends unfortunately for her performance. Lundgren, Wilson and Dafoe all seem to be just there for the paychecks.

The back-story exposition is confusing and leaves a lot of basic questions answered. For example, after their city was destroyed, slipped into the ocean and had to be rebuilt, what gave Atlantians the power to breathe under water? Well, they just learnt how to breathe under water, according to the film.

There are many interesting aspects of the visuals but most of the time they are lost in a screen packed with activity, so much that it’s hard to focus on anything in particular.

The final battle is confusing, you aren’t sure who is fighting whom, a huge monster makes an appearance with Aquaman with no discernible reason and there seems to be a lot of shooting and explosions but few people actually being killed.

The song choices are wierd – a romantic sequence in Italy to Mystery Girl is awful, the worst of the film – and the score isn’t particularly memorable.

Australian James Wan directed so he shoulders much of the blame, although the fan-boy critics always go after regular DC executive producer Zack Synder whom they blame for ruining the universe.

Wan is primarily associated with horror franchises Saw, The Conjuring and Insidious, but did direct the last fast and Furious film so has some block-buster experience.

The film has five credited writers, meaning, as is usually the case, too many cooks spoiled the broth.

Finally, for a film that boasts 20-odd stunt people and is almost wholly set underwater, the lack of an underwater unit in the credits is very telling.

Ultimately, Aquaman isn’t bad, it’s just not the best way to spend $160 million making a blockbuster film.