Friday, September 19, 2008

Superhero Movie (PG-13-2008)

There are several reasons not to bother with this movie: it was not screened for critics, it did horrible box office and the theater-to-DVD turnaround time was very quick. Those are usually the ingredients for a horrible movie. There is only one reason to actually give the movie a chance: It is actually pretty funny. Using the framework of the first "Spider-Man" film, "Superhero Movie" spoofs the comic-book movie genre and actually does so pretty effectively. One of the problems with many of these modern spoof movies is a tendency to throw everything into the mix to see what sticks, paying no attention to whether any of it makes sense or maintaining narrative flow. "Superhero Movie" goes back to the "Airplane!" method of spoofing the genre while telling the story in a cohesive way. Make no mistake, the comparison to "Airplane!" does not put this film in that class. Many of these films, e.g, "Scary Movie" try too hard to shoe-horn as many movie references as possible, whether they fit or not. "Superhero movie" at least sticks to the genre it is spoofing and rarely makes a tangent just to fit something else in. Two instances where it does so are a Tom Cruise You-Tube spoof that is actually pretty funny and a Pamela Anderson cameo that is really not. The Pamela Anderson cameo is part of an X-Men tangent that the movie could have done without. Another problem with the movie is, surprisingly, Leslie Nielsen. With "Airplane!" and "The Naked Gun" on his resume, he is arguably a master of the spoof genre. However, somewhere along the way, he forgot the basic element to what made those films a success: Play the comedy straight. In "Superhero Movie", he is way over the top, making him sort of a parody of himself. The bottom line is that this a much-maligned movie, sometime for good reason, but one that actually made me laugh quite a few times. It is hardly a great movie, but no nearly as bad as you may have been led to believe.

Grade: C-

Trailer:


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