Masters of the Universe review: He-Man and Teela fight Jared Leto in kooky toy movie

Running time: 132 minutes.PG-13 (some suggestive material, sequences of violence, action, language).

In theaters.Mattel’s Oscars track record ends with “Masters of the Universe.”The toy company’s latest movie is no “Barbie,” and Tony Kushner won’t be hosting any classy for-your-consideration events for it come winter.Thank goodness. No, this decidedly summer flick, directed by Travis Knight, was made solely for your amusement.

It’s fun, helium light and doesn’t have a single thought in its dumb head. The trip will be nostalgic for some children of the 1980s and nineties, but I somehow managed to avoid 44 years of He-Man, She-Ra and Skeletor action figures, comic books and big-screen adventures starring Dolph Lundgren.To the uninitiated, just the title “Masters of the Universe” sounds pretty stupid. And yet the strength of Knight’s reboot — a word which becomes murkier by the hour — is that it leans heavily into that silliness rather than strenuously contorting it into a portentous, dark epic.

You can’t very well approach characters with names like Fisto and Ram Man as if they’re soldiers in “Saving Private Ryan.” But in hungry attempts to mint their own “Lord of the Rings,” many studios mistakenly do just that. Not here.The zany tone of this appealing action-comedy-fantasy combo is a lot like that of 2023’s very good “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” in how it goofily distills high nerdery for the masses and has a blast doing so.Will the masses actually show up? More on that later.   The story of the beautiful planet Eternia falling to Skeletor and his subtly named henchwoman Evil-Lyn (Alison Brie) is easy to follow since we’ve seen many versions of it before.

When the king and queen are captured, little Prince Adam is sent by a Sorceress (Morena Baccarin) with the Sword of Power to Earth in hopes that he’d one day return and save his home. See? So far, that’s the same plot as “Sonic the H...