Movie Review: Superhero Movie

A high school loser gets bitten by a dragonfly, develops superhuman abilities, and becomes a spandex-wearing crime fighter.

RELEASE DATE: March 28, 2008

RUNNING TIME: 85 minutes

VIOLENCE FACTOR: Contains cartoonishly comic mock violence

BAD WORDS: There are a surprising number of obscenities given the PG-13 rating, perhaps because they're playfully naughty rather than mean-spirited. They're strangely unnessary, because the biggest laughs are generated by the cleverly handled innocent material.

RACY? Not explicitly so, but there's more sexually suggestive material than you usually find in a PG-13-rated film. Needless to say, this is not for all grandchildren.

OTHER THINGS TO KNOW: There are a few sight gag drug references along the way.

CRITIQUE:

Chances are your grandchildren will want to see this one, just as they did Epic Movie, Date Movie, and the sequels to Scary Movie. That's why Superhero Movie has a title as straightforward as an ice pick.

Superhero Movie is a spoof of you-know-what-kind-of you-know-whats. Writer-director Craig Mazin also scripted two of the Scary Movie sequels, and one of his producers is David Zucker, who also produced and played a small part in the 1980 film, Airplane!. Parodies of superhero epics Spider-Man, Batman Begins, X-Men, and Fantastic Four abound.

Drake Bell stars as a high-school student who gets bitten by a genetically-altered dragonfly, thus gaining enormous strength and speed, to say nothing of armored skin. He becomes a costumed, angst-ridden crime fighter known as The Dragonfly. Sound familiar? The criminal he spends most of his time fighting is played by veteran character actor Christopher McDonald, who becomes a supervillain known as The Hourglass and pursues immortality by pilfering the life force of others.

Among the veteran farceurs on hand are Leslie Nielsen, Tracy Morgan, Marion Ross, Jeffrey Tambor, and Robert Hays. They deliver a modest number of random laughs along the way, some of them — especially the sight gags — are relatively inspired.

Mazin provides a more respectable narrative line than many of the recent counterpart parodies featured, and seems to have a decent sense of the absurd. But what's strange about all the curious off-color stuff is that most of it is unnecessary to the film's mine of humor. Mazin apparently aims to provide many an outrageous moment for kids to chuckle about at bedtime.

Lord knows, this genre needed spoofing. But a more thoughtful and disciplined approach might have resulted in a comedy that could, unlike The Dragonfly, fly without draggin'.

GP Rating System:
Three Grands = Bravo, don't miss it.
Two Grands = Good enough, don't dismiss it.
One Grand = Okay, even if we dis it.