With Eternia under attack by Skeletor and his crew, The Sorceress sends a young Prince Adam and a VERY precious sword to present day Earth. The only thing is that Adam loses the sword during the journey and must find it. We next see him fifteen years later.

As a member of Gen X who used to watch the MOTU cartoon series on TV, I’m glad to report that this isn’t a film project that ridicules its source material. Sure, there’s meta humour and mild ribbing but there’s a lot of respect and affection here too.

There’s also probably the best use of a song by The Cure I’ve ever seen in a film. The song is Boys Don’t Cry which is apt as there’s a strong pro-male message within the film which is nice to see and truly ‘red pill’.

There’s other examinations of masculinity with Jarod Leto’s masterfully camp portrayal of Skeletor. It’s almost like he’s channelling an old pro like John Gielgud or Laurence Olivier. It really is a thing of wonder. He also looks very frightening.

Another aspect regarding the film and its depiction of masculinity is very intelligent. He Man has earned a place in gay culture as whilst he wears very little and is very muscly, he epitomises the alpha male but is also very attractive to gay men because of this. There’s also a short distance from being uber-masculine and being uber-camp. Think the leather guy in The Village People or WWE wrestlers. The film is VERY aware of this and references it brilliantly. Hence, we get a character who Adam has named ‘Fisto’ as ‘he fists people’. We get references to Adam’s muscles and his huge sword. During a pivotal scene, there’s a Queen track playing because, of course there is!

There’s also a brilliant piss take of all things woke with Adam’s utterly vile boss and horrific workplace resplendent with pronouns on his desk sign.

There are downsides. Not all of the gags work but this is strangely endearing. There’s also a section of the film which feels like filler. It’s 20 minutes that doesn’t need to be there.

But whilst I thought the film had by this point run out of juice and ideas, I was very wrong! There’s a scene before the grand finale that made my jaw hit the floor. I’m not going to ruin it for anyone but it’s innovative, very intelligent and frankly, brilliant.

The rest of the cast are uniformly great and the new He Man as depicted by Nicholas Galitzine is fantastic.

Add to all of this a brilliant Dolph Lundgren cameo, and I had a thoroughly great time.

This is far too knowing, self-aware and entertaining to be just some kind of rehash of something that was popular with a certain demographic.

4 out of 5 stars