After Guardians of the Galaxy and Deadpool (both movies I love) made a ton of money it's obvious that the bean counters at Marvel think that piling on jokes is the answer to making a great movie (and, of course, money).

The problem with that is that the tone for this movie is way off. It's supposed to be dealing with Ragnarök, which is (very simplified) the death of gods and end of the world.

Go back and watch the scenes in Avengers: Age of Ultron where Thor has a vision of Ragnarök and compare the tone in that movie with this one. You don't really feel like there's anything at stake when there's (supposedly) witty dialogue and slapstick going on in every goddamn scene. It effectively undercuts everything in the movie.

But the cardinal sin is that the comedic parts aren't very funny, although I have to say that I chuckled a bit at emo teen Hulk (surely it can't be a spoiler that the Hulk shows up in this movie since he's in the trailer and on the poster?). After a while it became embarrassing to watch everyone on screen scrambling for cheap laughs. It reached its apotheosis when the sloshed Valkyrie drunkenly fell off the ramp, in a performance that would make even third rate porn actors blush.

The only thing I've seen directed by Taika Waititi is (except for a few episodes of "Conchords") is "What We Do in the Shadows", which had some OK scenes and an amusing premise, but was hardly a knee-slapper. But one things that's clear is that he's no James Gunn.

The most impressive thing about this movie is that it made the first two Thor movies seem pretty damn good.