| |
do you agree with this review? |
|
|
|
|
| |
To post a comment you must login or register |
A REVIEW BY BOB SINCLAR 07/02/2006
Ok so everyone knows by now the sad and terrible fate of Christopher Reeves which ended abruptly along with the Superman 4 bomb at the box-office and for 20 or so years the mostly financially rewarding exploitation of the best known superhero franchise in the universe, and, may I add, of all time.
Well you can rejoice & celebrate people. Superman returns finally, looking all fresh & quite able to keep doing a bunch of super tricks for at least 3 more movies (these things go by 3 to fit in the 3 case DVD collector’s edition packed with a plastic Superman action figure). Maybe you’re wondering by now what the fuck is the plot all about, since every good & relevant review such as this one should start with a brief overview of the storyline. Ok that’s enough celebrating!
Well you see it’s like this. Superman after a long 5-year vacation throughout the universe in his little crystal spacecraft thing finally decides to crash back on earth (yes I know cool spacecraft but he still can’t fly for shit) right in the corn field of his adoptive human mother’s farm (good aiming though). After admitting to his mom that he didn’t quite learn anything at all from his field trip, except that he’s not as super anywhere else than on earth, and after stupidly losing his mother’s dog by throwing a stick, like way far, Superman finally decides to go back to metropolis (the only big city in the superman universe) and gets his old reporter job back, instantly … not even a freaking job interview, nothing. Surprisingly enough no-one seems to really care where he went and what he did all this time hence he can go on easily with his clumsy super-humor and life saving job routine without getting noticed or distracted. Who would notice him though… the daily planet newsroom seem full of useless lifeless automats. I suppose just like in real life the news if fabricated elsewhere than in these places. Unfortunately while he was flying around the universe, his cute little co-worker & love interest person, Lois Lane (played by Kate Bosworth), got involved with an actual nice guy who happens to be the editor in chief’s nephew. Nothing out of the ordinary so far… Quite standard woman’s behavior, Lois Lane chooses financial security over super powers. The other problem for Superman is that Lois now comes with an autistic kid (ok you guessed who the father is)… which seems like a lot of responsibility for one man even a super one. Meanwhile Superman’s nemesis, super-villain Lex Luthor, over-acted by Kevin Spacey, gets out of jail and back in the world-domination/destruction business.
What happens next?.. Superman shows off his talent, and his brand new red-battle-rangers boots, saving some random dudes that have absolutely nothing to do with the plot during a couple of non hard-on-inducing action scenes. Kevin “Lutor” Spacey (still over-acting), surrounded by a bunch of instantly forgettable evil-sidekicks, annoyingly prepares his evil plan which happens to take place close to the centre of the universe, the USA. Lutor is surprised during his evil doings by the hello-we’re-friendly-journalists of the daily planet who incidentally do not forget to put themselves in the most life threatening situation they could find at the time. Superman, who’s luckily not too overwhelmed with any action scenes at that particular moment in the script and was just passing time flying around some American flags, proceeds to save them without omitting to put himself in contact with a new kryptonite recipe (one would think he ought to know the kryptonite trick after 4 movies). He becomes all weak and gets kicked around like a dumb ass but finally, more shaken than hurt, it wasn’t too bad except from a few scratches on his blue spandex. He finally pulls himself back together and saves the world during a poorly directed and rushed climax where he gets to throw away in outer space some huge piece of land. To keep it all in good spirit and probably out of respect for the super-hero, director Bryan Singer chooses not to show us the massive tsunami resulting from Superman’s action, and that must have accidentally slaughtered millions of innocent citizens (of the united states!) who were just minding their own business, longing for world peace and stuff. When he sees this Superman prefers to pass out only to wake up for the happy ending.
In the middle of his quiet non-intense time on screen Superman does not forget to take what’s her name on a forced by the producers romantic flight -- small talk included (so how have you been?, so what’s the weather gonna be like this week?, grab my ass superman!, wow look a flying monkey!) and basically does the exact same shit as in the first movie. Fortunately Kate Bosworth shows us some sexy feet… that was for the erotic moment. Those of you who, like me, were expecting some acrobatic steamy aerial super sex scene with red and pink panties being ripped off and falling from the sky, super erection & whatnot… Well you kids are in for a big disappointment. That’s what you get from watching too much porno.
While I appreciated the rock solid and serious once-in-a-lifetime opportunity performance by Brandon Routh as Superman, I felt like pretty much every other aspect of the movie was a super letdown and I will explain why… Because this is my review and I can do whatever I want, even doing all the explaining at the end of it. The movie started well and put me in a nostalgic mode right from the beginning, listening to this famous score and watching the wonderful-wonderful opening credits sequence. Not long after, the hostilities started as well with a nicely choreographed and almost spectacular sequence where Superman rescues the troubled, somewhat-worried-for-their-lives passengers of a plane which, and it’s unfortunate, has lost its wings. These days james bond with a red cape can do pretty much the same shit & Neo is like way past this early amateur stage… Soon after, the movie totally loses its pace and the cliché-based script kicks in and takes forever to bring us to the anti-climactic ending. During my lonely time of boredom in the theatre, I got to do a lot of thinking and came to realize that every single sequence in this flick is a copy paste with an updated look & feel of the first movie with Christopher Reeves. The worst part being that, this Superman version 1.2 includes a whole bunch of bugs in the screenplay & acting thanks for the most part to Kevin Spacey’s total inaptitude to bring back to life a memorable character which forever belongs to Gene Hackman.
While some may argue that the homage to the first movie is enjoyable and hardly noticeable for the zit-faced target audience, I just thought that the studio execs, used the lamest possible way they could find to bring back this character to the big screen. I guess that’s what happens when you have 327 writers working on the same too hot project for 10 years and the studio, which has the fear, finally runs out of cash on the writing budget. When they reached that point they spent their last 100 bucks on a remake-type story and $20 millions on any director who’d recently done a $$$-making superhero project within the last 2 years (out of the 3 of them, the 2 good ones were already taken), hoping that would save them. That kind of unbalance in your spending can hardly bring you a good result.
Anyway, by the end of this film I had to piss so bad that I was more concerned about my nads than about what was going on on the screen, which was an overstretched fakely suspenseful ending. Don’t you just hate it when you have to piss during the ending sequence! It’s like do I go discretely in what’s left of my extra large diet coke? Do I look like the moron who misses the last 5 minutes of a 3h flick? or do I pray that the ending will not be of the Lords of the Ring-45-minute-long type? I opted for option number 3, unfortunately Superman takes forever to end and when it does, the feeling you get is more on the relief side, no matter how much you had to drink. What should have been in a perfect producer’s world a wild anticipation for the next episode is soon transformed into a wild anticipation for finally a freaking good summer movie this year, please.
Several questions I asked myself during my long stay in the bathroom were…how the fuck was the $225 millions budget spent? Where (the fuck) were the special effects? How come it looked cheaper than a 10 years old $100 million movie? Was that really Kevin Spacey? … those will remain unanswered, because I just don’t care enough.
I tell you people, a director/writer/ballsy-studio-executive (if that exists) combo change is of the outmost importance if you wanna make Superman attractive again. And yes his stupid costume and hair-style make it an even greater challenge. People coming from the horror genre background seem to have the style and eye for the super hero genre. Spend more on the script, give his chance to a non-overrated director and the mix shall bring you a better flick. While the future Great and very stylish director Rob Zombie is still too green and still in his “look at me I just made the most disgusting flick” phase, some other guys (Snyder, Aja, Siri come to mind) would do the trick. I even suspect Pitof with the right script would have done a much better job than Singer. Batman’s comeback last year was hugely more intense, engaging. Too bad Superman didn’t get that kind of smart treatment.
(super)Man! could you, like, just fly away & return better next time ?
© 2006 Tom H
|
 TO TOP |
do you agree with this review? | |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
EMAIL
PRINT
COMMENT 
ABUSE
WRITE YOUR OWN REVIEW NOW!
