Alas, another sequel that doesn’t live up to the original, which wasn’t all that great to start with. (And he never once gets to say “Hammer time!” unless I missed it.)

Natalie Portman apparently saw The Avengers (a much better movie, incidentally) and doesn’t know why her old boyfriend Thor didn’t at least phone her while he was fighting aliens and his wicked stepbrother in New York, even though since the first Thor movie she’s Moved On to the extent of having a new boyfriend. (He’s played by Chris O’Dowd, who shows up all over the place but if probably best known in the U.S. as Kristen Wiig’s love interest in the film Bridesmaids and in the UK for his role in The IT Crowd.) At least this time Natalie Portman gets to visit Asgard (which should remind her a lot of the planet she used to run as Queen Armadilla), and she even gets comped a really nice suite for most of her stay in the Magic Kingdom.

Unfortunately, her vacation is spoiled by evil ancient elder gods who want everything to be really, really dark, and since Ms Portman turns out to be holding the McGuffin they need, they launch an all-out war on Asgard in which the infantries of both sides seem to be armed with medieval swords and bows and arrows while their respective air forces are equipped with World War II-era hardware. That’s not how I might have pictured a war between two groups of gods, but then again I never studied theology.

Once again the most appealing character is Portman’s intern, played by Kat Dennings, who has decided to hire an unpaid intern of her own, a tall young guy she constantly orders around. The best thing in the whole movie is their kiss late in the film. (The fact that the two interns kiss not a spoiler. If you didn’t see it coming you need help.) It’s almost worth renting the film and fast-forwarding through the rest just to see it. Or maybe it’s on YouTube by itself.

If the other parts of the climax get too boring you can still enjoy the London scenery. It’s a little disturbing to think the East End had to suffer a war between alien gods so soon after the events of Cockneys versus Zombies (also a much better film), not to mention the Olympics, but as they say in the other film, London’s been through worse than this.

Link: http://youtu.be/npvJ9FTgZbM

by