The film’s convoluted parallel plot adds almost nothing to the impact of the storytelling, other than to make it feel muddled.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 18, 2024

For a film about a very fast man, the narrative is slow at times. The tacky CGI and video game artistry make the experience less immersive too.

| Jun 24, 2024

For 2/3 of The Flash -- and it's too long -- it's kind of fun... in the last sections it becomes slightly video game-ish.

| Jan 9, 2024

“The Flash” is centered in the sweet spot between action, comedy, and heart because is is grounded in a deep affection for the source material but is not afraid to play with some of its absurdities.

| Original Score: B+ | Jul 7, 2023

Blame the ancient Greeks for inventing the general idea of the multiverse. Blame DC for propagating the concept in one of its Flash comics in 1961. And blame anyone you like for this hot mess of a film.

| Jun 28, 2023

It's funny here and there... But overall, it's kind of a mess.

| Jun 28, 2023

It’s efficient, pacy and largely enjoyable stuff.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 18, 2023

A thundering mess that ends with the usual boring battle in a CGI sky. But, on a scene-by-scene basis, The Flash passes the time better than Gunn’s own puzzlingly lauded Suicide Squad.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 17, 2023

Keaton, like the character he’s playing, has had several decades to think about what being Batman might really mean -- and his prickly, complicated presence has a gravity the movie otherwise strives for but seldom achieves.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 17, 2023

The action scenes capture the scale of people with otherworldly powers, but it’s a cheap thrill, not genuine awe, like video game levels or, ahem, theme park rides. It’s ~150 minutes that go by quite slowly.

| Jun 17, 2023

Unfortunately the best aspects of the film are drowned out by a sea of middle-school humor, silly plot twists and weak acting, especially by Ezra Miller in the title role.

| Jun 16, 2023

As it is, there’s the pesky way the multiverse dulls the dramatic edge of death, even as the film seeks to sharpen the blade.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jun 16, 2023

It's IP-plugging for the easy to please fandom.

| Jun 16, 2023

The Flash is no genre-redefining masterpiece and it’s unlikely to appeal to viewers who aren’t already bought into the superhero oeuvre, but it’s a much better movie than what’s being advertised.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jun 16, 2023

Mad trippy or catastrophic? This DC superhero epic is actually a mix of both, dragged down by exhausting multiverse hopping but flashy fun on the wings of virtuoso Ezra Miller and the grumpy comic perfection of Michael Keaton as a Batman on the ropes.

| Jun 16, 2023

While it may not be a resounding triumph, it isn’t the DC dud it might have been.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 16, 2023

[Miller] gives Barry a real sweetness, and the performance holds the movie together.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 16, 2023

While I can’t quite recommend The Flash, I’m likewise certain there are plenty of potential viewers out there who will have a grand time watching Barry sprint from one corner of the multiverse to the other, and that’s just fine.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 16, 2023

A movie that surprisingly balances the outsized action thrills with emotional heft.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 16, 2023

It quickly turns into such a blur of nonsense that its early charms are all but wiped away, and the film runs out of steam as it drags to the nearly two-and-a-half hour mark.

| Original Score: C+ | Jun 16, 2023