Producers: John Rickard and Zev Foreman   Director: Ángel Manuel Soto   Screenplay: Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer   Cast: Xolo Maridueña, Adriana Barraza, Damían Alcázar, Raoul Max Trujillo, Susan Sarandon, George Lopez, Elpidia Carrillo, Bruna Marquezine, Belissa Escobedo, Harvey Guillén and Becky G    Distributor: Warner Bros.

Grade: C+

There’s a measure of charm, some goofy and some sentimental, infusing the domestic dynamic in this latest addition to the DC Comics film franchise, a superhero movie that’s truly a family affair (in the biological sense, not the comrade-style one of the Avengers or Justice League).  And the fact that the family is Latino earns it points in the diversity department.

But despite those elements in its favor, “Blue Beetle” emerges as a rather undistinguished example of the genre, marred by a rote origins plotline, a boring villain (played by the starriest member of the cast, no less) and mediocre CGI.

Blue Beetle has been around since the late thirties (though never reaching the top tier of DC heroes, and barely the second), but though the script by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer has allusions to the two earlier versions of he character (Dan Garrett in the earliest incarnation and especially Ted Kord in the reboot of the 1960s and beyond), it’s essentially based on the 2006 revival in the person of Jaime Reyes.  He’s a youngster chosen by the Scarab, a glistening blue MacGuffin of unspecified origin, to meld with it and thereby acquire super powers—enhanced strength, power of flight—when wearing the armored exoskeleton the Scarab encases him in.

In this telling, Jaime (engagingly genial Xolo Maridueña) is returning to his hometown of Palmera City, having recently graduated from college in pre-law.  He finds his loving family in trouble.  His father Alberto (Damián Alcázar) is not only recovering from a heart attack, but has lost his auto repair shop.  Jaime and his younger sister Milagro (Belissa Escobedo) get menial jobs at the mansion of weapons-manufacturing Kord Industries hard-driving COO Victoria (Susan Sarandon), but are fired by their imperious boss as a response to Milagro’s insubordination and Jaime’s impetuous intervention when Victoria’s thuggish aide Carapax (Raoul Max Trujillo) threatens her niece Jenny (Bruna Marquezine), who objects to the company’s priorities.

Jenny invites Jaime to come to the company headquarters the next day in hopes of another job, but instead she accidentally involves him in the theft of the Scarab from the lab presided over by Dr. Sanchez (Harvey Guillén); Victoria had long been searching for the artifact for years in hopes of using its power to complete her project to create a super-soldier (OMAC for short) using Carapax as host.  Despite Jenny’s warnings, Jaime connects with the Scarab and becomes Blue Beetle.

That quickly leads Victoria to take aim not only at him, but his entire gregarious family—his father and sister, as well as his mother Rocio (Elpidia Carrillo), his grandmother (Adriana Barraza) and hi voluble, conspiracy-theorist uncle Rudy (George Lopez).  In the ensuing melee she captures Jaime, intending to drain the Scarab’s power from him and insert it into Carapax.  His family, despite grieving the loss of Alberto in the battle, determines to rescue him, and Jenny joins in the effort, enlisting equipment left behind by her father Ted, who disappeared years ago when he was fighting crime as the earlier, non-super Blue Beetle.  Eventually with the help of his family Jaime escapes Victoria and connects with the Scarab’s essence Khaji-Da (voiced by Becky G) to access its full power, but even then his battle with Carapax, now OMAC, is a close thing that is going badly until the super soldier recalls his own childhood as a victim of Victoria Kord’s private army.

Perhaps befitting its less-than-stellar comic-book roots, “Blue Beetle” was originally intended for the streaming service HBO MAX, and its generally cheesy visuals probably reflect the original small-screen mentality, and look pretty terrible when projected onto the screen of a big auditorium.  Jon Billington’s production design is comparatively chintzy (Ted Kord’s old secret lair is no Batcave, and the literally buggy airship from his storehouse is—one hopes intentionally—comically absurd), and the visual effects supervised by Kelvin McIlwain have a sloppy quality that editor Craig Alpert tries futilely to camouflage with quick, mushy cuts, while Bobby Krlic’s score churns away beneath them.  On might add that the Blue Beetle suit, presumably designed by costumer Mayes C. Rubeo, complete with the familiar pincers protruding from the back, is surely the most ungainly such outfit since Iron Man’s, though the OMAC getup is even uglier, resembling a lumbering Transformer with porcupine spines emerging from its sides.  Under the circumstances comparisons people will try to draw to today’s big-budget superhero extravaganzas don’t seem apt; in terms of its genre portions, the movie is actually more reminiscent, in plot and execution, of a piece of schlock like 1991’s little-seen, justly-forgotten “Guyver.”

That’s exacerbated by Sarandon’s shrill, one-note turn as the ruthless, weapons-obsessed Victoria Kord, the most tiresome aspect of the picture.  Trujillo would be equally dull as her technologically-enhanced super-bodyguard were it not for a turn his character takes toward the close.  On the other hand, once freed of the shackles of the superhero portion of the plot, director Ángel Manuel Soto gives the material some of the giddy air of a Latino sitcom.  That can go overboard: Lopez is so broad that he threatens to turn things into complete farce, while the transformation of Barraza’s Nana into a ferociously grinning revolutionary as adept with a huge laser-firing automatic rifle as with her knitting needles is traded on rather too much.  And while Escobedo’s younger sister is meant to be lovably sharp-tongued, she comes across too often as simply obnoxious.  As Jaime’s mom Carrillo is pretty much wasted (as is Marquezine as his prospective love interest), but Alcázar brings a low-keyed dignity to Alberto, even if the dream sequence in which Jaime, at the point of death, visits him in the afterlife, only to be told that it’s not yet his time, is a bit of maudlin cliché that goes too far.  One can argue that here’s undeniably some stereotyping going on in the depiction of Reyes family, but the affection of the treatment compensates.

There are a couple of stingers in the closing credits.  The first suggests the direction a sequel might take in introducing an additional character, while the second seems to have little purpose but fun.  Stay for them if you like, but if so, you won’t avoid the rush to the parking lot.   

Producers: Debbie Liebling, Andy Daly, Michael B. Clark, Alex Turtletaub and Marc Turtletaub   Director: Marc Turtletaub   Screenplay: Gavin Steckler   Cast: Ben Kingsley, Harriet Sansom Harris, Zoë Winters, Jade Quon, Andy George, Cody Castro, Aubie Merryless and Jane Curtin   Distributor: Bleecker Street

Grade: C+

Seniors can enjoy Steven Spielberg’s “E.T.” as easily as their six-year-old grandkids, but long-time producer Marc Turtletaub has decided to give them their own version of it, in which the youngsters who adopt the extraterrestrial are replaced by a trio of seventy-somethings.  “Jules,” as the result is called, is an oddly pleasant but rather undercooked dramedy about aging that seems at a loss about how to wrap things up, trying “Cocoon” on for size before deciding it doesn’t fit.

Ben Kingsley, tamping down his usual exuberance so much that if you squint you might mistake him for Mark Rylance, plays Milton.  In the script by newcomer Gavin Steckler Milton’s the Elliott character played by young Henry Thomas in 1982, but here he’s a seventy-eight year old widower living a solitary life in a small Pennsylvania town; his main interests are watching certain television shows religiously, tending a backyard garden and taking to the microphone during the public comment opportunities at city council meetings, where he repeatedly suggests altering the town motto and installing a crosswalk that would make his trek to city hall safer.  His daughter Denise (Zoë Winters), who runs a veterinary clinic, is concerned that his increasing forgetfulness might indicate the initial stages of dementia, but it’s hard to tell because his normal attitude is one of low-key somnolence.  He antagonized his son, who lives on the West Coast, years ago, and they never speak. 

One day Milton walks into his back yard to find that a space ship—an old-fashioned flying saucer, actually, has crash-landed then.  His first reaction is to note that it crushed his azaleas and his birdbath.  But he takes it in stride, only slightly miffed when his 911 call is treated as a prank, even after news reports on television begin asking for the help of the public in recovering a weather balloon that’s gone down somewhere in the area.

He is taken aback, though, when he finds an alien (Jade Quon, dressed in a body suit that makes her look like one of those “little green men” familiar from fifties sci-fi, except the suit is gray).  Eventually he invites the creature inside, giving it a tour of the house and offering it food; all it appears to eat are apple slices, which prompts him to walk to the grocery and buy a bunch of apples, calmly informing Dave (Aubie Merryless), the teenage check-out clerk, that they’re for the alien living with him.

Milton also mentions the spaceship and the alien at his next commentary at the municipal council, but the only ones who seem to notice are his fellow regulars at the microphone: well-meaning widow Sandy (Harriet Sansom Harris), who’s always proposing some scheme to serve the public good, and hardboiled Joyce (Jane Curtin), whose topic is always pickleball.  Sandy makes a point of stopping by to see if Milton’s alright, and after an initial shock becomes his partner in taking care of Jules, as they call their guest.  Joyce becomes suspicious of their new-found friendship, finds out what they’re up to, and joins them in their mission to protect Jules from prying eyes as they try to figure out how to help the little innocent fix the ship and go home. 

All this while Denise drags Milton to be examined by a doctor (Anna George) who humiliates him with standardized tests of mental acuity and recommends he be sent to a group home, and Sandy is pleased that one of her do-gooder plans, involving troubled young people being partnered with seniors who can act as mentors, has found a taker in Danny (Cody Kostro), who shows up on her doorstep.    Unfortunately things don’t go as she’d hoped, and only a telepathic intervention by Jules saves the day, though in a fashion that puzzles authorities, who begin taking an interest in these local eccentrics.  Meanwhile Joyce is regaling her new friends with stories of her long-ago time in the “big city” of Pittsburgh, and federal authorities are still searching for the UFO and, apparently, getting closer to discovering where it went down.

The filmmakers struggle to tie all this together in a satisfying conclusion, with one element—the energy source Jules needs to start up the saucer—proving to be something more than a few viewers will find a bit tasteless (though it does afford Joyce the chance to make an atypical sacrifice) and Jules offering the trio the chance to escape earth (thus “Cocoon”), an attempted twist that proves oddly confusing and unsatisfying.  But rest assured that everything turns out well for the three seniors, who are no longer the lonely individuals they used to be.

The stars, each in his own way, give more depth to this parable about the realities of aging than the frailly whimsical material deserves, with Kingsley’s withdrawn pain, Harris’ unquenchable sweetness and Curtin’s desperate toughness all representing different responses to their common plight, while Quon’s stillness is at once comforting and slightly scary.  All benefit from the permissive but curiously solemn style of Turtletaub and editor Ayelet Gil-Efrat, who never seem to have decided on a style beyond the mildly peculiar.  The technical contributions—Richard Hoover’s production design, Christopher Norr’s cinematography—have the bland competence typical of modestly budgeted pictures, and Volker Bertelmann’s score exudes niceness.

Despite the fact that “Jules” can be commended for trying to say something pointed about growing old alone in America, the weird genre-based premise it employs in the attempt comes across as precious rather than profound.  In the end, unlike Jules’s ship, it remains earthbound, an “E.T.” without that undefinable touch of magic that would have made all the difference.