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6 years 7 months ago
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REVIEW:
by Steve Ekstrom
It’s a personal belief of mine that if you cannot make fun of yourself—then you should not be allowed to make fun of anyone else. For years, audiences have embraced spoofs of horror movies, police dramas, John Hughes’ movies—you name it…Hollywood has found a way to spoof it. Now, with the advent of the comic book comeuppance in Hollywood, it’s our turn. You kind of have to look at this kind of “standard†spoof movie like you would any other kind of generic concoction. It even had a quirky yet generic tag line: “The greatest superhero movie of all time. (not counting all the others)â€
Superhero Movie overtly covets Sony’s Spider-Man with sprinklings of Batman Begins, Fantastic Four, and X-Men. Throw in some pretty standard sight gags from the scores of other spoof movies, a glimpse at a comic book convention—complete with oozing fanboys in homemade costumes—and you can pretty much skate through this average film. Superhero Movie centers on the teenage Richard Riker becoming ‘The Dragon Fly’ (Drake Bell) and doing battle with his nemesis Lou Landers (Christopher McDonald) a.k.a. ‘The Hourglass’, a science mogul on his deathbed with the ability to drain humans of their lives—only to prolong his life by 24 hours. Richard pines over the girl-next-door Jill Johnson (Sara Paxton) while he deals with his gassy Aunt Lucille (Marion Ross) and his cantankerous Uncle Albert (Leslie Nielsen).
Alliterative names aside, Superhero Movie has its funny moments—if you don’t like spoilers, you may want to avert your eyes…and scroll down a bit.
The opening sequence was a cross between the older Batman movies from the 90’s and Spider-Man—with the displaying of the fibrous material of The Dragonfly’s costume; complete with a moment of pause as he adjusts the tightness of his suit around his groin. There is the infamous clip from the trailer with Tracey Morgan playing Professor X and Pamela Anderson as Invisible Girl. I laughed pretty hard during a scene where Richard Riker spills a powerful pheromone mixture on himself and about 100 different kinds of animals dog pile on top of him, dry humping him—with a snail, on one of his lace holes on his tennis shoe, squirming and saying, “Take the whole thing _____.â€
However, I think that the most notorious moment of the movie was a little off the radar. Lou Landers accepts an award for a medical breakthrough and receives a golden hot water bottle and applicator and is deemed “the Douchebag of the Yearâ€â€”complete with a catchy lounge act number that will probably haunt me for the rest of the weekend as I serenade my friends with its glorious schmaltziness.
Other than just being not-so-impressed by the movie, there just wasn’t enough “smart†superhero gags. If you’re going to make fun of this genre specifically, in the immortal words of George Clinton and the Parliament Funkadelic, “TEAR THE ROOF OF THE SUCKA!†There were too many easy gags that didn’t rely on the subject material—in essence, you could’ve seen half of the jokes in a Naked Gun movie—they were just too vague. I guess you could say I’m partial—these spoof movies have never held a candle to any of the classic Mel Brooks spoofs like Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, or History of the World, Part I. I think what troubled me most was the fact that the best gags in the movie were shown as outtakes midway through the credits.
Looking ahead to what is sizing up to be the best summer for superhero flicks ever—I’d save your money on this one and wait for a lazy Sunday on HBO eight or nine months from now. Superhero Movie is fun and all, but with wallets tightening up and gas prices going up, I’m saving up so I can devote every last one of my movie dollars to the superhero movies that are going to really bring down the house this summer.
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