Warner Bros./Discovery CEO David Zaslav called director Andy Muschietti’s The Flash the “best superhero movie ever made” with a few months leading up to its release. I took this quote with a grain of salt, because how could it possibly be? There’s a lot of drama attached to this film, with reports of reshoots and adding and removing star cameos, and plus everything going on with the troubled life of star Ezra Miller. Warner Bros., however, did plenty of early fan screenings for the film, all of which I missed, sometimes due to conflicting plans, sometimes due to an overall lack of interest. Well, I come to you today with mixed opinions on the newest DC Studios extravaganza.

The Flash is a better superhero movie than I expected it to be and yet it’s still a frustrating series of missed opportunities, amounting in an overall product that’s pretty lousy from my vantage point. It’s possible that I’m just tired of the multiverse story. However, when other recent films (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the Best Picture winning Everything Everywhere All At Once) have done this particularly well, attempts like this kind of feel hacky and lame. The Flash, alas, is not one of the greatest superhero movies of all time. It is merely another unit the studio is pushing out in hopes of turning a profit.

We open on Barry Allen (Ezra Miller), aka The Flash, who refers to himself as ‘the janitor of the Justice League’, always tasked to come in and clean up Batman and Superman’s problems. He sort of stumbles into the fact that if he runs really fast, he can run across different timelines and different universes, encountering another version of himself from a past alternate universe, in which his mother (Maribel Verdu) has not died, and his father (Ron Livingston) has not gone to prison wrongfully for her murder. He creates a way to bring this alternate universe into his own, but soon realizes, maybe this wasn’t the best idea.

I had gone into this film thinking the Ezra Miller of it all would be the thing dampening the fun for me. In case you are unaware, there have been multiple allegations of questionable behavior, including assault and harassment charges, a kidnapping conspiracy, and other various issues attached to the troubled actor in the past few years. That was incorrect. Miller is truly magnetic and full of charisma in this role, having to play opposite themselves throughout the entire film. This is somehow pulled off seamlessly, with great comedic and dramatic timing on Miller’s part. Miller is a joy to watch in this role, and the blame somehow does not fall on them in why The Flash absolutely does not work.

In this universe, Michael Keaton is the Batman, but he’s weathered and brought down by life and he’s living in solitude, and both Barrys need to bring him back to save the Multiverse. We also encounter Sasha Colle’s Supergirl, who has an interesting backstory and has an engaging screen presence, but there’s not a whole lot for her to do beyond the big CGI-heavy battles in the third act.

The visual effects are a big part of why The Flash falls flat. Director Andy Muschietti has responded to criticism about the visual effects by stating that they’re supposed to look kind of bad. I don’t know how this could possibly be true, when the seamlessness of Ezra Miller playing two onscreen roles at the same time works perfectly fine, but when we get to the climactic battles, the visual assault of colors and explosions and CGI overwhelms and punishes the eye to a bit of an absurd degree.

Where The Flash really screws itself over is that final act, where the self-referential nature of the nonstop fan service and the callbacks, goes wildly out of control. There’s a sequence where the audience sees references from almost every single DC thing that has ever happened, and this includes resurrecting dead actors via CGI. Other films have done this in the past. I think we need to stop doing this. This is ghoulish and weird and not fun. There’s some cameos involving actors that were going to play certain characters, but did not after contract negotiations fell flat. I suppose the purpose of this is to reward the viewer, to pat them on the back, because aren’t you cool? You understood our references! But to the average viewer, the references on display in The Flash will make less and less sense as we trudge our way to the inevitable and unnecessary post-credits scene.

The Flash is a comic book film that is constantly referencing other IP and rewarding those who go into this film wanting to be rewarded. The opening sequence, and most of the last ten minutes of the runtime, particularly a standout scene in a grocery store, give you a clear idea of the film this could have been. It starts and ends particularly well. However, for that two full hours in the middle, it’s all Easter eggs and cameos and ugly CGI and migraine-inducing madness.

The utter cacophony of absolutely everything-ness took this viewer right out of a potentially worthwhile narrative about grief. Needless to say, the repetitive nature of this kind of story added to the almost two-and-a-half hour runtime, exhausts and punishes the casual viewer. Again, Miller is a strong enough performer to mostly come out unscathed, despite, well, you know, everything else. However, the script and the film around them is doing nobody any favors.