This movie is everything I hate about modern Hollywood.

To begin with, it’s yet another IP adaptation. Worse, the IP is a toy, as Mattel’s looking to hit Barbie gold again. Oh, and it’s from the ’80s, the most nostalgia-mined decade in possibly all of history.

And then the movie is in that Four-Quadrant Blockbuster tone where seemingly every major movie lives now. All the dialogue is quippy when it’s not trying to be sentimental. The comedy goes broad at times, with Skeletor reprising a Dr. Evil joke and lots of “fisting” comments for Fisto. It’s full of I-know-that-thing reference, the movie constantly nudging you in the ribs and asking, hey, remember that?

And what’s more, there was already a revival of He-Man just a few years ago, Kevin Smith’s Masters of the Universe: Revelation, which was about a thousand times better, and actually had a reason to exist.

So yeah. I should have just fucking loathed this movie.

But somehow, I didn’t. I really can’t explain this one. The best I can say is that the movie just had a kind of breezy affability to it — it didn’t feel cynical and factory-made, it felt like a silly little bagatelle that everyone was having fun with.

In the light of day, I’m sure that’s not true, and that it’s every bit the cynical, soulless corporate product that every similar movie is. But while the movie’s playing, they manage to preserve the illusion, so I guess I have to give them that.

All that said: This movie is two hours and twenty-one minutes. This is legitimately indefensible. There is no way such a piece of fluff should be that long. Ninety minutes would be ideal, two hours could be forgiven, but coming up on two and a half hours is just flatly unacceptable.

I can’t recommend the movie — especially not with that length — but, annoyingly, I don’t regret watching it. I feel like I’ve disappointed myself, somehow.