Thor: Love and Thunder, a newer Marvel film, is about finding inner peace and that it is not always how you expect it to be.

It is a story about Thor’s retirement from being a superhero. He feels empty inside from all the grief, depression, and anxiety he has pent up over the past 13 years of being one of Earth’s mightiest heroes. But as soon as he starts thinking of a life with peace, chaos strikes. A God butcher by the name of Gorr has been traveling between planets butchering Gods and is coming to Asgard next. So now, Thor must grab his hammer and travel back home to save his people.

That bring us to the main theme of the movie, love.

Thor’s most beloved ex, Jane Foster, battles breast cancer and on the edge of death decides to go to Asgard for closure and a mighty revelation occurs within her. When the children of Asgard are captured by Gorr, Thor and his entourage decide to embark on a journey to save them and end Gorr’s murderous reign once and for all.

Though the plot is there, the execution is not.

Characters like Lady Sif were thrown away, CGI was used entirely too much, and the whole first half of the film was covered in jokes. Though director Taika Waititi is known for his humor in his films, the film felt more like a parody than an actual Thor movie.

For instance, there is a scene in the film where a child is communicating to Thor after being kidnapped by the God Butcher. His head is floating and surrounding it is a weird, looming gold spark. It reminds me of when students would wear green to school pictures and all you would see was their head.

Also, the humor was overdone. Personally, I love Waititi’s humor in the MCU because it was so well done in Thor: Ragnarok, when he made the Thor movies from an overly melodramatic tale to an amazing film with great comedic timing. But when he would attempt serious scenes in this film, it felt like there was an underlying joke that we were supposed to laugh at. This made the movie seem like a bad SNL skit.

Though the movie did have some flaws it was a pretty solid phase four Marvel movie that I would totally watch again. It has a hopeful ending and an edge of your seat post credits scene that has me excited for the next Thor movie. So, in my opinion, it receives 3½ out of 5 stars.