Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer are two very talented actresses.
McCarthy can straddle both comedy (Bridesmaids) and drama (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) and earn Oscar nominations, while Spencer picked up a gold statue for her work as the sassy sidekick in The Help.
But despite their overflow of talent, the pair are unable to save alleged superhero comedy Thunder Force from itself.
The film, written and directed by McCarthy's husband Ben Falcone (who also directed her last big screen film, Superintelligence, which was significantly more enjoyable than Thunder Force), actually has a great concept.
After a cosmic ray blast turns Earth's existing sociopaths into genetically mutated supervillains called Miscreants, Spencer's brilliant scientist Emily Stanton resolves to find a way to turn regular people into superheroes, to combat the criminal rampage.
McCarthy's Lydia Berman is her long-estranged former best friend, who reenters her life as their high school reunion approaches.
Next thing you know, Lydia has accidentally subjected herself to one of Emily's experiments and is now becoming super strong.
Emily takes a treatment to become invisible, and the two team up to form Thunder Force, the world's first real-life superhero team.
All this would be great fun if explored for more than shallow laughs and cheap humour.
The comic moments are mostly barely funny, and the superhero action is only passable.
The premise of sociopaths becoming superpowered has so much potential for further exploration, and the fact that it's barely touched on in Thunder Force is a travesty.
While it is great to see a film showing that you don't have to be a chiselled Hemsworth to be a hero, Thunder Force is sadly not up to scratch.
Even the supporting cast of Jason Bateman, Bobby Cannavale, Pom Klementieff and Melissa Leo do little to improve the mess.
In fact, Bateman's character is just ridiculous and the most cringeworthy thing about the film - which has a lot of cringeworthy moments.
All one can hope at this stage, is that Netflix does not decide to greenlight a Thunder Force sequel.