Superhero Movie Review

Superhero Movie reviews

Movie

Superhero Movie

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2008-06-20 21:39:34

Rating

2/5

Provider

CinemaSource

Review

This latest churn-'em-and-burn-'em genre parody flick offers a handful of sophomoric (in a good way) and worthwhile laughs to even the most serious-minded comic-book fans.

Story

It's basically the first Spider-Man film, with dirtier jokes. The plotline dutifully follows--and upends--all the story points of the wall-crawler's big screen opus, replacing Peter Parker with Rick Riker (Drake Bell), a geeky high schooler bitten by a genetically enhanced dragonfly who then gains requisite superpowers. Rick has the pert love interest (Sara Paxton), the megalomaniacal nemesis the Hourglass (Christopher McDonald), and a dotty, doting uncle-aunt combo (Leslie Nielsen and Marion Ross) as well as walk-ons encounters from other superheroes spoofmeisters including Tracy Morgan as Professor X, Craig Bierko as Wolverine, Simon Rex as the Human Torch and Pamela Anderson in blink-and-you'll-miss-her turn as the Invisible Girl, quite literally. But despite some allusions to a handful of recent heroic hits, Superhero Movie sticks surprisingly close to the Spider-Man template only, and never adequately attacks the entire phenomenon of comic book flicks.

Acting

To use accomplished parody film icons like Nielsen (of Naked Gun renown) and Robert Hays (of Airplane legend) is to invite disastrous comparison. Fortunately, disaster doesn't strike--not entirely. The new kids Bell (of Nickelodeon's Drake and Josh fame) and Paxton (Aquamarine) are sunny enough on-screen personalities but don't quite have the comic chops or the oh-so-serious ironic approach to mark them as standouts in the genre. Most of the star cameos fall flatter than you'd hope, though Marion Ross surprises with a go-for-broke turn that will forever color the way you think of Happy Days' Mrs. Cunningham. McDonald does all the film's heavy lifting, gleefully chewing the scenery, spitting it out and then re-chewing the remains. Special props go to Miles Fisher for his brief but brilliant send-up of Tom Cruise.

Direction

Superhero Movie neither soars to the silly heights of its predecessor Scary Movies nor crashes to the ground like the dreadful Epic Movie. Craig Mazin, who wrote the third and fourth Scary Movie offerings and helmed the 2000 superhero spoof The Specials, has enough of a solid feel for the material. The laughs come at a decent pace, though lots of the gags lack inspiration and too many of the spot-on shot swipes from the Spider-Man films stop at imitation and rarely achieve a greater sense of parody and fun. Still, if a silly look at superheroics is what you're after--and TV's The Tick is still lingering in your Netflix queue--then Superhero Movie wins the day in the end.

Bottom Line

Hollywood.com rated this film 2 stars.

Copyright © CinemaSource 2008.

Movie

Superhero Movie

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2008-05-23 16:40:35

Provider

MRIB

Review

A great deal of hot air has been expended on the accelerated pace of modern culture. Watching Superhero Movie, though, you can tell why. While it ridicules every superhero film extant – from Batman to X-Men to Fantastic Four – its primary target appears to be Spider-Man, which was made a mere six years ago.

Of course having minimal sense of history would amount to no more than a footnote were Superhero Movie not so horribly unfunny. This is a film in which characters are dry-humped by animals and buried beneath farts, which is no doubt extremely amusing if you are 15 years old and find Alvin and the Chipmunks a tad adventurous. The plot, if that is not too strong a term, concerns a high school softy, Rick Riker (Drake Bell), who is bitten by a genetically modified dragonfly, whereupon he develops the ability to do pretty much everything except fly.

It's not all bad – witness Robert Joy's Professor Stephen Hawking pining for some female attention and the heartwarming appearance of Leslie 'Airplane' Nielsen as Rick's Uncle Albert – but the longer the film goes on the slighter it becomes until you find yourself slowly regressing and smiling, half-heartedly, at benign old ladies who suffer from a severe case of flatulence and a fist fight between the Dalai Lama and the Pope.

Copyright © MRIB 2008.