We saw Superman Returns last night. Right. If it hadn't been for Lo's spilling the Fanta I snuck in for her and Biggy's cellphone ringing TWICE--Hello Moto (No, you don't want to go the movies with us), I'd have fallen asleep. The film was a giant soggy cracker. Besides the production designer (wow!) and Parker Posey's hair (playing the REAL villain), there was no true star. And between the epicene Brandon Routh and bland Kate Bosworth, it was like trying to light a match in the rain.
Watching Routh in action, I was reminded of an essay I read in Salon a few years ago, entitled "Robby Benson's Clean White Underpants," wherein author Cintra Wilson's description of Benson, as I apply it now to Routh, put it better than I ever could: " [He] was too pretty to be taken seriously...always described as doe-eyed, but his eyes are more eerily religious, like backlit blue marbles. If [he] had been allowed (or had allowed himself) to develop a little more coolness and/or masculine, sexual alertness, his teary-eyed vulnerability would have had more legs. But since his supersensitivity was coupled with a cloying, chaste manner, he was written off as a dickless square. ...[He] moved on tippytoes, like he was carrying a dying baby bunny in a potholder. [He] represented a soft, sexless flavor that called for a taste nobody but grade-school girls ...wanted to acquire."
Hey, that was fine for me when I was ten and thought you could get pregnant if someone gave you a wet willy. But not today. Give me a Christopher Reeve. Give me a real man of steel, with a steely look and tracks in his shorts--not a simpering boy-man whose look suggests he's wondering whether his eyebrow wax appointment is Tuesday or Wednesday.
And don't get me started on the problems with the story. I don't have all year.
18 comments:
this is the first bad review i have heard about superman. i didn't really want to see it in the first place, but everyone i know has loved it. even the people who said they don't usually like movies like that.
i don't know who i should believe. this is a very difficult position you have put me in.
I believe you'd hate the story, too, Sarah. I won't give it away though, or even what it says about women, or ultimate way a woman can betray a man...
I mean THE ultimate way.
i knew it must have had something to do with that to make you hate it so much. you should have gone to see "a prairie home companion" instead. i'm pretty sure lola would have hated it though.
Have you heard about the bulge controversy? His crotch has been digitally altered to be smaller, as to not scare children. Does that make it any more interesting? (Check out: http://www.news24.com/News24/Backpage/HotGossip/0,,2-1343-1344_1849549,00.html)
Just wondering. That's all I had to go on. I know I'm going to have to go to this thing eventually...
Hmmm...I'm certainly going to check that tidbit out. I heard the same about Lohan's breasts for the Herbie movie.
I thought Superman Returns was fantastic...save for Kate Bosworth. It's a dark storyline and it probably is about 20 minutes too long, but I loved it. Brandon Routh is hot, hot, hot. I'd wax his eyebrows anyday.
Collin, it stands to reason you and I would have different ideas of hot.
The last Harry Potter was dark.
I didn't find the story any darker than the Bette Midler song "From a Distance." Blech.
i like that bette midler song.
Great! So now besides not having tracks on his shorts AND having waxed eyebrows, the boy-man will have a vagina.
T.Ro, you are one jaded lady. lol
need I ask where the thing about carrying a baby rabbit in a pot holder came from?
minus five, sarah, will you forgive the comment on your picture if i mail you some cigarettes (or is that illegal?)
and, i lived in a trailer at one time. does "trailer trash" cancel out retard?
Mamoo, if you'll pay attention, you'll see I didn't write that. I was quoting that Salon writer.
It was just an eerie coincidence.
I think you are missing out on the biggest loser in this movie (and of the summer) James Marsden.
First we are led to believe that he died in the first 20 minutes of X-Men, and Wolverine takes his girl. Now's he's getting Superman's sloppy seconds?
Other than that, I left the movie not feeling like Superman actually did anything that was "super."
Kevin Spacey did his best trying to save the role of Lex Luthor, who really came off as a watered down version of the Joker after someone washed off his makeup.
Thanks, anonymous of the last comment. You're exactly right.
no do anything super? That scene on the airplane with the shuttle was spectacular! I'm an effects buff, and they kept me interested enough to become a part of the story. Superman is about truth, justice, and the American way, but he is mostly about heart. My faith in the heart of this superhero was returned. Tania, have you ever enjoyed a blockbuster event film?
I was bored with the story and performances, and the special effects couldn't redeem it for me.
As far as Truth, justice, and heart, I had problems with a story where the true but unacknowledged hero is a man who risks his life for what he believes to be true love and his own son and no one bothers to tell him otherwise. (I mean, unless I fell asleep and missed that part.)
I've loved more mainstream movies than I care to admit, among them:
Superman
Spiderman
Batman
Top Gun
Platoon
American Pie
The Wedding Crashers
All the old Brat Pack flicks, etc. on and on
Post a Comment