The psychedelic visions of Doctor Strange, Marvel’s most mystical comic book adaptation yet, won’t open the doors of perception for any moviegoers not eating their popcorn from a blotter sheet soaked in LSD. The film’s far-out CGI, while occasionally breathtaking, won’t be all that unusual to anyone who had Alex Grey or MC Escher prints hanging on the walls of their college dorm, and its story is less mind-expanding than watching The Wizard of Oz synchronized with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.
Nevertheless, this multi-million-dollar lava lamp of a movie looks awfully impressive on a big screen, and glides by with enough charm that its flaws only glare once the spell wears off, maybe an hour or so after the credits roll.
Director Scott Derrickson, moving into the Marvel big tent after a handful of fine but forgettable horror and sci-fi pictures, uses every item in his computer-generated toolbox to turn Strange’s extra-dimensional adventures into three-dimensional spectacle. The uneven plot is made palatable by a strong cast that is equally adept with punchlines and portent—or, when speaking the name of the cosmic big baddie “Dormammu,” both.
Benedict Cumberbatch is the titular good doctor, an arrogant surgeon whose career is iced when a car wreck ruins the nerves in his gifted hands. Strange is desperate for a remedy for his shattered fingers, and takes his anger out on a fellow doctor and former flame, played by Rachel McAdams, stuck in the thankless role of the long-suffering but forgiving girlfriend.
Western medicine fails him, so Strange heads East, where the super-monk Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor) leads him into a magic school—a cross between Hogwarts and a Buddhist monastery—run by the Ancient One, played by Tilda Swinton, head shaved and eyes wide.
After some acclimation to the kaleidoscopic world of the permeable multi-verse, Strange shows as much talent for sorcery as he did neurosurgery. Soon enough he is fighting a rogue former student of the magic academy (Mads Mikkelsen) intent on bringing about the end of the world as we know it.
Doctor Strange is at its best the further it gets from reality, and from the expectations of the superhero movie. The physics-warping action sequences are dazzling, even if the old techniques (good guy punch bad guy) are all too present. In its climactic scenes, the film cleverly subverts the usual world-saving formula of the Marvel universe, appropriately for a character whose third eye is mightier than his two fists. All the more shame that too much of the movie is so familiar.
It’s disappointing that Doctor Strange isn’t a little stranger. But when it does let its freak flag fly, it can be thrilling.
