Throw it at the wall and see what sticks seems to be the standard screenplay mantra when making parody movies these days. This time the subject skewered is the spate of superhero films at the multiplex. Well, some stick and some stink but there are a few chuckles in there too.
Rick Ricker (Drake Bell) is living with his Aunt Lucille (Marion Ross) and Uncle Albert (Leslie Nielsen) after the death of this parents (pop was played by Robert Hays). He’s smitten with his next door neighbor Jill Johnson (Sara Paxton), but she’s dating the snarky Lance (Ryan Hansen).
Rick is trying to impress her as their class tours on a tour of the research facility of the millionaire Lou Landers (Christopher McDonald), who is also Lance’s uncle. A genetically altered dragonfly escapes and bites Rick. He develops superpowers from the bite and dons a costume to combat evil as the Dragonfly.
Landers funds the lab because he’s dying and trying to prolong his life. In an experiment he achieves it but has to suck the life-force out of others to keep himself going, which he’s evil enough to do. He also discovers, thanks to Dr. Strom’s (Brent Spiner) expert Wikipedia searching skills, that if kills enough people that he’ll achieve immortality.
So Landers adopts the guise of the super villian Hourglass to do his dastardly deeds and soon becomes the archnemesis of the Dragonfly.
It’s not anywhere near “Airplane!” territory, but I thought that this parody got closer to the mark of being funny than Epic Movie or Meet the Spartans did. It must be that there’s a Zucker in the production office as well as a cameo by Robert Hays. Does that make it a good movie? Well, not really. It’s still a mixed bag of jokes.
There’s a prolonged fart joke involving Marion Ross(!) that my kids laughed at and I could only think was that I hope that “Mrs. C” got one nice paycheck for such humiliation. Leslie Nielsen is an old pro at such though.
Drake Bell has honed his over-the-top acting skills on shows that my kids watch and it’s about the same in this film. Tracey Morgan was pretty terrible as Professor Xavier and seemed to be sleepwalking (or is that sleepriding since he’s wheelchair bound?) through the role.
Pop culture is skewered (Tom Cruise) but there is a skeleton of a story to hang the film on and perhaps that’s why it felt a little better to me than the usual rapid fire pop culture hit jobs (mentioned above) and at least felt like the script wasn’t written by totally drunk fratboys.
The fratboys in this case were probably only half drunk. It made back its production costs so a sequel is already in the works.
Superhero Movie is presented in anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) and is enhanced for 16x9 televisions. The first special feature is that you get an extended version of the film (by about seven minutes). Next you get a commentary from writer/director Craig Mazin and producers David Zucker and Robert K. Weiss.
There’s also a 5 minute alternate ending, 10 minutes of deleted scenes, the 11 minute “Meet the Cast,” the 10 minute “Art of Spoofing,” and the 2 minute theatrical trailer.
It’s not Airplane!, but superhero fans will find a joke or two to guffaw at. I just hope that Marion Ross got a large paycheck because seeing her fart for ten minutes onscreen can’t look good on her resume.
Superhero Movie is now available at Amazon . It is available for pre-order at AmazonUK for an Oct. 13th release. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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