Another week of summer brings another superhero movie. This time, it’s “Blue Beetle,” an entry in the DC Universe featuring an alien scarab that chooses a host and gives him superpowers as it fuses with his body and covers him with armor. Since the insect is also sentient, it doesn’t always listen to what its host wants to do.
The most recent choice of the scarab is Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña), who is DC’s first Latino superhero. Director Angel Manuel Soto and writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer are also both Latino, and they fill “Blue Beetle” with cultural references that highlight the film’s focus on representation.
Representation is fine and always welcome, but that alone doesn’t make a good movie. “Blue Beetle” works well enough to hold your attention for most of its 127-minute runtime. However, it’s an odd bird of a comic book movie in that its main character isn’t as interesting as the supporting characters surrounding him. Compared to his family, Jaime is just kind of dull.
Take Uncle Rudy (George Lopez). He drives a Toyota Tacoma he lovingly refers to as “The Taco.” He fits into what I think of as familiar “uncle categories”: in this case, “funny uncle” (after all, he is George Lopez) and “conspiracy uncle” (everybody has one). When Jaime flies back home to Palmera City after graduating from his university, Uncle Rudy shares his usual conspiracy theories that the government is spying on them.
Rudy’s ramblings sound daffy, but we discover his paranoia has paid off when he reveals his invention that jams security cameras and forces them to play Spanish-language cartoons. He’s also quite adept at driving The Taco whenever it becomes a means of escape, which is often.
An even better example of a supporting character who outshines Jaime is Nana (Adriana Barraza, an Oscar nominee for “Babel”), the family matriarch. If anybody deserves an origin story movie, it’s Nana. She is far from the trope of the kind, sassy abuela. When she literally lets her hair down and shows an adroitness for weaponry, “Blue Beetle” alludes to her prior life as a revolutionary, and it sounds fascinating.
Even Jaime’s wisecracking sister Milagro (Belissa Escobedo) outshines her beetle bro. Before Jaime becomes a big blue bug, she helps him get hired at, and almost immediately fired from, the estate of Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon) after defending Victoria’s niece, Jenny (Bruna Marquezine) from some goons. Milagro teases her brother because his attraction to Jenny is so obvious.
Feeling remorseful, Jenny offers Jaime a job at her family’s company, Kord Industries. It’s a front for the secret, hideous military experiments conducted by Victoria on a mysterious muscleman named Conrad Carapax (Raoul Max Trujillo). She wants to harness the power of the scarab into an army of indestructible men; that is, if she can convince the scarab to choose Carapax as its next host.
If the name Kord sounds familiar to you, you already know what’s coming for the requisite mid-credits sequence. (No spoilers here.)
Jenny is the catalyst for Jaime’s transformation into Blue Beetle. After stealing the scarab from Victoria’s lab, she puts it in a fast-food hamburger box and hands it to Jaime in a moment of danger. Milagro opens the box at home, and the scarab fuses with her brother. Once she learns where the scarab is, Victoria sends Carapax to retrieve it.
“How did it get inside him?” a panicked Milagro asks. “It went up his ass!” speculates Rudy. Not quite, Unc.
I understand why “Blue Beetle” gives Jaime such a colorful, robust family that also includes his parents Alberto (Damián Alcázar) and Rocio (Elpidia Carrillo). The filmmakers want to show the closeness and supportiveness among the Reyes clan, and how they band together when one of their own needs saving. Not even bug-related superpowers are stronger than a familial bond.
As Jaime, Maridueña eventually rises above the blandness of his character; he excels in the scenes where Jaime is interacting with his kin and brings much-needed humor to the familiar “getting to know my superpowers” scene. The F/X-filled moment when the scarab first takes control is a lot of fun. Additionally, “Blue Beetle” has the guts to have its superhero lose all his clothing when he transforms (unlike The Hulk), so that when he turns back, he’s stark naked and usually in public.
“Blue Beetle” is a watchable time-waster made better by the actors and the cinematography by Pawel Pogorzelski. Outside shots fill the screen with bright, often harsh, blues; but he lights the Reyes home in such warm, inviting hues that you can almost feel the family’s love for each other emanating from the screen.
★★★
BLUE BEETLE
Directed by Angel Manuel Soto. Written by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer. Starring Xolo Maridueña, Susan Sarandon, George Lopez, Adriana Barraza, Belissa Escobedo, Bruna Marquezine, Damián Alcázar, Elpidia Carrillo, Raoul Max Trujillo. In English and Spanish. 127 minutes. At AMC Boston Common, Landmark Kendall Square, suburbs. PG-13 (violence, bilingual profanity)
Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe's film critic.