Review of "Thor"

'Thor" is a tale of two worlds, which may be one world too many.

Essentially, when the movie comes down to Earth it's pretty good. But when it spends time across the universe — and it spends a lot of time across the universe — it's pure geek fare. Which may thrill geeks but leave others yawning.

Across the universe sits, apparently, the fantasy realm of Asgard, a sparkling city of magical bridges and hallowed halls housing a race of do-good warriors who are sort of guardians of the galaxy.

Odin (Anthony Hopkins) is king of this world. His one son, Thor (Chris Hemsworth), is an arrogant hot-head who lives to do battle. The other, Loki (Tom Hiddleston), is a shifty magician. Each man wants to be king.

When Thor goes off on some unauthorized inter-planetary vengeance mission, busting the chops of evil blue giants who love to freeze things, Odin flips his literal wig and, as punishment, banishes Thor to earth.

All the preceding, which takes up the film's first half hour, is delivered with full fantasy pomp and circumstance, with characters dressed in armor and capes, gold goblets raised, giant monsters unleashed and gobs of computer-created visuals.

Then Thor hits the ground and the movie becomes a lot more fun. Odin drops his boy in the New Mexico desert, where he's promptly hit by a car driven by scientists studying the sky.

Those scientists would be the lovely Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), her irreverent assistant Darcy (Kat Dennings) and mentor Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard).

At this point, the film becomes a funny fish-out-of-water story as the imperious Thor runs face first into American culture, and Hemsworth transforms his character (a bit too easily) from a self-loving jerk to an amiable lug.

As he's doing this, a sort of obligatory chaste instant love occurs between the big guy and scientist Jane, although few sparks are detected on screen.

Luckily for the plot, Odin tossed Thor's signature weapon, the mighty hammer of whatever-or-other, down to Earth behind him, so Thor has something to do when he gets here. A secret government agency has surrounded the hammer — it conveniently landed a few miles from where Thor touched down — and now Thor needs to reclaim it.

And so on. Eventually Thor zips back to Asgard for a final geek-fantasy showdown that's so overblown it makes "The Lord of the Rings" look like it was based on actual events.

All of this is directed by Kenneth Branagh, the Shakesperean actor-director who has much experience with costume dramas and little-to-none with comic book epics and 3-D visual spectacles.

For some reason he shows a particular affection for faraway shots — tiny horsemen crossing a long bridge with a magical city glimmering in the background — that take on an irritating 3-D fuzziness.

And while he lets humor aid the earthbound scenes, everything set elsewhere has a dreary, heavy tone. Maybe the surroundings are so inherently silly that he — and the film's eight (!) screenwriters — is afraid to be silly in them.

In truth, "Thor" is so thoroughly ridiculous (the people in Asgard just happen to all speak English) it makes "Spider-Man" seem plausible.

The best comic book films trade on self-effacing humor to offset their absurdity (think "Iron Man"); when "Thor" does this, it's kind of fun. When it gets ever so serious, it's tedious.

True believer comic freaks, of course, won't care. But for others, "Thor" may be too out of this world for its own good.