Movie review: ‘Superhero Movie’ offers a few chuckles
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Mar 31, 2008 at 9:06pm
By Matt Martin
The good news is that Superhero Movie is better than the awful Epic Movie, Date Movie and Meet the Spartans spoofs. The bad news is that it’s not nearly as good as the Naked Gun or Hot Shot movies, or Airplane!, though it’s written and directed by Craig Mazin, an apprentice of Jim Abrahams and David Zucker, the brainpower behind those earlier, better films.
Superhero Movie has some funny moments, but it’s burdened with unfunny sophomoric humor that trots out lame flatulence and senior-citizens-who-talk-randy jokes that ceased to be amusing a long time ago. It’s that lack of imagination that dilutes the jokes that do work.
At least Mazin’s film tells a story instead of merely stringing together dumb sketch after dumb sketch as in so many recent spoof movies. Gassing on all super-hero movies, but mainly the Spider-man films, it’s the tale of the nebbish Rick Riker (Drake Bell), who gets transformed into Dragonfly via a bite from a mutated insect. In between pining for his schoolmate Jill Johnson (Sara Paxton), he finds himself battling the forces of evil, most notably Hourglass (Christopher McDonald), the villainous alter ego of a billionaire industrialist.
The cast is fine, though Bell’s facial expressions are limited. The above-mentioned actors are joined by Leslie Nielsen (still unsurpassed in deadpan comic delivery), Tracy Morgan, Brent Spiner, Pamela Anderson, Regina Hall, Dan Castellaneta, Jeffrey Tambor, and Marion Ross. Alas, Ross, the beloved mom in Happy Days deserves better than to be the butt (pun intended) of the longest fart scene since Blazing Saddles. On the brighter side, “Airplane!” star Robert Hays makes a welcome cameo in the film’s funniest sequence, a Batman parody in which Riker’s parents are killed during a mugging—but not in thew ay you think.
But for every funny sight gag (a Professor X type riding a portable toilet) there are a dozen others that fall flat (a Human Torch that burns up, a tastless necrophilia joke). Superhero Movie is all over the place, but it hits its marks enough that’s it offers some smiles and even a few guffaws.
Superhero Movie is rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content, drug references and language. Running time: 85 minutes. Macsimum rating: 5 out of 10. You can check out the film’s trailer on the QuickTime movie trailer site.
Don’t wait. Guarantee your seat before you go and avoid a sold out show. Skip the box office lines and buy movie tickets at Fandango.com.
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 10,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
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