“Giant monsters, I can clearly handle. But what bothers me is that last night, you were in my dream.”

How absolutely ironic that the delightful surprise of the season is that the sequel to Doctor Strange is, well, strange.

As expected, Sam Raimi, THE KING OF CAMP, creates a playground of filmmaking joy to infuse his pseudo-horror absurdity into a story that was clearly mapped out by Marvel’s higher ups since the beginning. The start and end of the movie fade in and out with just as many MCUisms as it’s countless prepackaged turnouts (they’ve made entire fight scenes years beforehand) but that’s not to say that there’s not a directorial vision here, because in its entirety it’s nearly impossible not to see Raimi’s fingerprints all over this thing.

And sure the pacing is a slog sometimes, the emotion (though eventually sticking somewhat of a landing) is bare bones and whatever is on the skeleton bones doesn’t exactly say anything above providing a fun time (as I giggled with laughter at like everything) but it gave me the entertainment I sought. It has both bad CGI and good CGI—it’s a CGI cluster-dump—but one that has more stylistic fun than most Marvel movies combined.

Every eye-roll be spared, the moment the creativity of the single long take that the filmmakers (who probably had a great time) both literally and narratively transition the story to the next stage was the moment where the smiles didn’t stop until the credits rolled. And even more after that.

All in all, the second best multiverse movie this year. Thanks for reading!