‘Blue Beetle’ Review: DC’s Creepy-Crawly Crusader© Warner Bros. Pictures

Bug-people are a hot item at the movies these days, so after watching men swing like spiders or scurry like ants, is the audience ready to cheer a beetle? Never mind that “Blue Beetle” sounds like one of the also-rans mentioned in the superhero-dense universe of “The Incredibles”; the character has a long pedigree, with comic-book storylines launched in 2006, 1966 and even 1939. That makes him a kind of old-money member of the genre.

Most of us, however, had barely heard of him until the day before yesterday, and there’s a reason for that. Featuring an almost entirely Latino cast, and with its most important behind-the-scenes roles also filled mostly by Latinos, “Blue Beetle” is being hyped as a multiplex landmark by DC, whose onscreen universe the character joins. But the film was originally developed for streaming before being promoted to a theatrical release. Perhaps that’s because it’s so shamelessly derivative that it amounts to an undisguised cut-and-paste job. Adding lots of Spanglish and elements of Latino pride to the mix may make it a little unusual, but perhaps not enough for moviegoers who, according to the box-office chart, are starting to acquire a well-justified case of the ho-hums when it comes to assessing the endless stream of comic-book features.

When Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) graduates from college, he’s the first in the family to do so. But returning to his hometown of Palmera City, a fictitious corporate tax haven meant to suggest the Southwestern U.S., he’s still poor, and forced to work in a menial job alongside his cynical sister, Milagro (Belissa Escobedo). The city’s tech powerhouse, Kord Industries, is today run by a blood-sucking capitalist caricature, Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon), whose more progressive and soft-hearted brother, Ted, disappeared, leaving her in charge of the company their father founded as a weapons manufacturer. Victoria is bent on supplying an answer to rising crime by creating a cyborg army of private police officers/thugs—shades of “RoboCop”—but Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer’s script barely pauses to consider the sociopolitical implications of this.

Related video: ‘Blue Beetle’s’ Xolo Maridueña Takes A Shot At Warner Bros. About Feeling Box Office ‘Pressure’ After ‘Black Adam’ And ‘Shazam! Fury Of The Gods’ Flopped (Dailymotion)

Through a series of unlikely coincidences, an antique blue scarab held by the corporation as a treasure gets passed along to Jaime in a fast-food box through Victoria’s beautiful niece, Jenny (Bruna Marquezine), who’d like to turn the company around in accordance with her father Ted’s gentler vision. The decorative blue beetle turns out to invest great powers in its bearer, but only if that person is the chosen one: It’s Excalibug. The object glows, comes alive, and burrows into the shocked young Jaime via, er, a lower-body aperture. Lowbrow humor is a consistent feature here.

Once the beetle infiltrates Jaime’s system and covers his head with a helmet and his body with a carapace, he is essentially Iron Man, zooming into space on a whim, using his palms to produce shockwaves (and blades, and much else) while fielding suggestions from the calming voice of an interactive software feature included at no extra charge. As in “Spider-Man,” the sudden unexpected arrival of superpowers is treated as an uncontrollable blast of hilarity, like puberty or a chaotic driving lesson, and Ted Kord turns out to have left behind a kind of Batcave and (flying) Batmobile, or at least Beetlemobile.

Director Ángel Manuel Soto does put considerable, if only partially successful, effort into establishing the movie’s heart. Much screen time is spent exploring how much love there is in the clan, especially between Jaime and his upbeat but ailing dad (Damián Alcázar) and his strenuously wacky uncle (George Lopez), who turns out to be a tech genius who is forever getting everyone out of a jam by hotwiring whatever tricked-out equipment comes his way.

Since Victoria’s henchman—played by Raoul Max Trujillo and named Carapax in an instance of insect humor—is also her prototype half-machine soldier, he and Jaime have equivalent powers and are obviously headed for some of those tiresome Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots clashes that are usually the least interesting scenes in the Iron Man movies and are just as uninvolving here. Moreover, the accompanying dialogue is shopworn; as an invitation to a brawl, “Let’s party” was given an unsurpassable line reading by Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Commando” and no one should try to top it, certainly not Mr. Maridueña, who is likable enough but doesn’t offer much star power in the lead role. As his love interest, Ms. Marquezine is even blander. Even the usually reliable Ms. Sarandon is one-note, and Mr. Lopez’s clowning, beneath what appear to be several unruly hairpieces or possibly animal pelts, isn’t especially inspired either. Though it may have some novel elements, the franchise already feels tired, and isn’t much more promising than recent DC efforts “Black Adam” and “The Flash.” This beetle doesn’t have much juice.

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