P.M. BradshawJul 2nd, 2006 - 22:22:25

The Unnecessary Adventures of Superman

Let me get this off my chest first:
Parker Posey, amazingly enough, both sucks and blows. How she has
gotten the reputation she has astounds me. The reality of it is this -
you could, literally, cut every shot of her out of the new Superman
movie, every line of dialogue, and it wouldn't change the film one bit.
Her part is not only completely superfluous, but is utterly pointless.

And that may be the only thing 'super' about Superman Returns.

Superman Returns isn't a bad movie. Not at all. But it is a boring
one. And that's a special kind of sin when it comes to superhero
movies.

That being said, it’s the sheer number of duplication from the 1978 Superman movie, annoyances all, that take you ‘out’ of the movie experience. Here are the Grand Annoyances that make up this film...

At 2 hours and 34 minutes, it is way, way too long. To say you could cut an hour out of this movie would be generous. With the amount of 'plot' involved, this could easily have been a 1-hour TV show.

Seriously.

While it's not exactly a remake of the 1978 Christopher Reeve movie,
it's about as close as you can get sometimes. While one line is very
close to a line in that film, two others are repeated verbatim. Lex
Luthor, and his gal pal (who doesn't like him, and longs for/is sorry
for Superman) plan to kill millions of people and then make millions in
real estate. A piece of Kryptonite from Addis Ababa plays a key role.
Which film? Both !!

The young actor playing Superman? He's not bad at all, really. But he
doesn't play Superman; he does an impression of Christopher Reeve doing
Superman. Don't get me wrong, he does it well. But did we need that?

Speaking of which, did we need Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane? About as
integral as Katie Holmes or whoever it was in latest Batman movie, this
'sleepwalk' role of a nothing character could have been played by anyone. Even that Marsden guy (who sleepwalked through 3 X-Men movies, turning team leader Cyclops into a nothing character), could've played Lois Lane. Oh, but wait. He was busy sleepwalking through the role of Lois Lane's husband !

Frank Langella, who hasn't been good since he played Dracula 30 years ago, is equally useless.

Daily Planet boy scout in residence, Jimmy Olsen, however, manages to
drink a beer and say 'pissed.' Which is a nice step forward. But let's
face it, unless you're waiting for a Spin Doctors reunion tour, no one
cares about Jimmy Olsen's Blues.

Superman Returns is not a bad film. It's a long, sometimes boring,
exercise by someone who really wanted to make a Superman movie.

You won't laugh, you won't cry.
You'll just kiss 8 bucks goodbye.

And then wonder . . .

Why...?

It's a C +.

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E G matthewsDec 16th, 2006 - 22:08:29

in reference to pm bradshaws comments i have to say you are right and totally wrong, on one hand superman returns would have been fit quite well at 2 hours and 34 minutes, oh wait it was, my mistake (sarcasm), but with the right scenes added and the wrong ones omitted, for instance, the krypton journey, left in, the bank robbing sequence left out, parker posey, yes totally left out, her character left us with that dull useless feeling, now i do have to say that the whole land mass scene was kind of like 'hey i forgot something let me go back' to add time to the movie.
was it necessary to beat up superman in the end, no, but it left us with the whole invulnerability thing to think about.
overall i think thatyour view mr. bradshaw was quite insulting to the movie itself which i thought was done quite well, yes a little long but effective all the way around.

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amanda b.Apr 30th, 2007 - 01:24:06

i have seen superman returns in theaters and on dvd, too. I mean to tell you the truth, brandon routh looked really handsome in that superman suit. one of my teachers @ school thinks that he is hot, but i think he is handsome.

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