Blue Beetle: Las Cucarachas Fight Back

An alien scarab chooses college graduate Jaime Reyes to be its symbiotic host, bestowing the teenager with a suit of armor that’s capable of extraordinary and unpredictable powers, forever changing his destiny as he becomes the superhero known as Blue Beetle.

Review:

I expected there would be moments in Blue Beetle where the director Angelo Manuel Soto would homage Lucha Libre. I wasn’t disappointed. Both the Blue Beetle’s (Xolo Marduena) and the secondary villain – Carapax (Raul Max Trujillo) a nattier version of Danny Trejo, wear Lucha inspired helmets. Carapax’s has fringed Aztec inspired wing crests. The big battle between the Beetle and Carapax is a full blown Lucha fest, with better acting and CGI. Muy marveloso!

I’m not an avid DC fan, so I’m unaware of the comic source. The origin tropes are still the same: the young man thrashing around while adjusting to his new powers; clunky battles; hard-won moral lessons. There is a tragic loss, but it’s not his parents. The death functions as a Yoda presence- a dispenser of lessons and wisdom.

This is a story about La Familia rising to the challenge. An orphan superhero is counterintuitive to that. But the Beetle is the exception to a multiverse filled with tragic orphan origin stories.

Jamie, which the Anglos in the film constantly pronounce with a J sound instead of the true Spanish hard H, is really the second fiddle in his own origin story. The guy is sweet, earnest and boring. His family is what gives him color and life.

The grandmother (Adriana Barazza) with a revolutionary past proves the most capable- she expertly wields the biggest baddest gun- a phallic symbol that is never under used. George Lopez as the cholo uncle serves as the resident tech and computer genius. His slacker routine is tamped down but the insults and name calling are the full Lopez we know and expect. The rest are standard types done earnestly. The family ensemble scenes are the most joyful part of Blue Beetle.

Too bad that the romance between the do-gooder daughter, (Bruna Marquinez) trying to recapture the family company from the mother’s (Susan Sarandon) greed and sell out to the Military Industrial Complex, and Jamie have no screen charisma.