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Superhero Movie 8 out of 10 Posted: 07/23/08
Running time: 1:25 MPAA rating: PG-13 for crude and sexual content, comic violence, drug references and language. Peruvian rating: Mayores de 14
Cast:
Drake Bell, Sara Paxton, Christopher
McDonald, Leslie Nielsen, Kevin Hart, Marion Ross, Ryan Hansen,
Keith David, Brent Spinter, Robert Joy, Jeffrey Tambor, Pamela
Anderson. |
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When I started to watch Superhero Movie with a couple of friends, I was expected something in the vein of Epic Movie or Meet the Spartans, despite the absence of Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg in the opening credits. You know, something completely idiotic and unfunny. Instead, what I got from Superhero Movie was 85 mins of solid laugh-out-loud humour and jokes that, despite being idiotic and juvenile, are actually funny. Unlike the makers of Date Movie, Craig Mazin (Scary Movie 3 and 4) understands that, in order to make the audience laugh, pop culture references aren't enough; one needs actual jokes. And jokes is what Superhero Movie has. Even though are are a couple of excessively stupid moments, and although some of the "actors" who appear in the film's poster - such as Pamela Anderson - have about a minute of screentime, the flick nevertheless managed to make me laugh like hell. Maybe I was in the correct mood, or maybe it was the fact that I was with my friends; the truth is that Superhero Movie entertained me a lot, and reminded me of the golden years of spoof movies - masterful creations such as Airplane! or The Naked Gun.
The "main spoof" in Superhero Movie is the first Spider-man flick. The film tells the story of high school loser Rick Riker (Drake Bell) who, after being bitten by a genetically modified super dragonfly, develops superhuman abilities like incredible strength and armored skin. He decides to use his new powers for good and eventually becomes a superhero called "The Dragonfly." Like any good superhero, his plans of justice are interrupted by a villain known as the "Hourglass." After an experiment gone wrong, millionaire Lou Landers develops the power to steal a person's life force, and since he has to do this to thousands of people in order to survive, he comes up with an evil plan that involves a cheesy-looking machine and a conference attended by hundreds of would-be-victims. Will the Dragonfly manage to stop this bad guy, save his potential girlfriend, Jill (Sara Paxton) and learn the lessons taught by his clueless uncle Albert (Leslie Nielsen)?
One the things Superhero Movie does right when compared to garbage such as Meet the Spartans is that it focuses on spoofing one single genre of movies. Despite its name, even the Scary Movie saga has now resorted to spoofing all kinds of films, and Seltzer/Friedberg ventures spoof everything from movies to pop culture to American Idol and Britney Spears. Superhero Movie, on the other hand, focuses on making fun of superhero movies only (the main one being Spider-man, but there are also references to the X-Men trilogy and the Fantastic Four films, to name a few), meaning it feels less gratuitous and more like an actual spoof. Granted, there are a couple of pop-culture references (a hilarious "2 girls 1 cup" moment, for example), but they are few and far between and are, for the most part, really funny to people who know about the stuff.
The movie also succeeds because the jokes it provides with are actually funny. I'm not exaggerating when I say I laughed about ten or fifteen times during the course of the movie. Why is it so funny? Firstly, because there is a little bit of everything for every taste. There are many movie references, physical jokes, fart jokes (the "big" fart joke is the first gag of this kind that has made me laugh in years), wordplay, an actor spoofing Stephen Hawking, funny one-liners and visual gags - one involving inflatable advertising things moving in weird positions is especially hilarious. And secondly, because Mazin never abuses of a gag: if a joke doesn't work, it doesn't appear again, and if it does work, it doesn't appear again either so that the plot can move on, the audience doesn't get tired, and the filmmakers can present different, equally-funny moments. It is a movie like this that makes trash like Meet the Spartans look really bad - when compared to Superhero Movie, that particular dud is as funny as Requiem for a Dream.
Contrary to popular belief, comedies need good performances as much as serious dramas - comedic timing in an actor is essential for a joke to work. Fortunately, Mazin managed to get some good comedians for his movie. Drake Bell is great as Rick - he delivers his funny lines perfectly and gives a solid performance as a high school loser. Sara Paxton is adequate as Jill - she's just playing a parody of the archetypical damsel in distress. Christopher McDonald makes a solid, intentionally over-the-top and silly bad guy, and the likes of Keith David, Brent Spinter (Data from the Star Trek movies), Jeffrey Tambor (Hellboy and its sequel), Pamela Anderson and Regina Hall (the Scary Movies) have small but hilariously memorable roles. Then there's Leslie Nielsen, who seems willing to appear in any spoof movie nowadays - fortunately, he hasn't agreed to appear in a Seltzer/Friedberg one... yet. His performance is all right, I guess, (he's got some really funny lines) although he acts the same way he's been acting in every film he's appeared in for the last ten years or so.
So what else is there to say? I was pleasantly surprised by Superhero Movie. Considering the low quality of recent spoof movies (the only funny ones have been the Scary Movies, really, and even those aren't that funny), I was expecting this particular motion picture to be a piece of trash. Fortunately, it ended up being quite the contrary - Superhero Movie is a flick that understands what spoofing is all about - it focuses on a single type of movie, it has actual gags instead of mindless pop culture references or Britney Spears doubles, and contains some solid performances as well as a varied amount of jokes, so that the audience doesn't stop laughing during its relatively short running time. According to the Internet Movie Database, the film's working title was Superhero! Considering it's more similar to the likes of Airplane! than to Date Movie, for example, I think that title would have been more effective.
©2008 Sebastián Zavala - GG site