Column:
‘Superhero’ falls flat, doesn't soar
Published April 4, 2008
It has, for a long time, boggled my mind that the people who made “Airplane!,” one of the greatest comedies of all time, are responsible for its worst follow-ups, the “Scary Movie” series and its too-numerous progeny.
“Superhero Movie,” the latest spoof on which one of the “Airplane!” writers have worked, is not good. But it is, at least, mediocre, high praise for a series that has heretofore required reviewers to contemplate giving out halves of half-stars.
“Superhero Movie” succeeds — relatively speaking — where its unspeakably terrible stable mates “The Comebacks” and “Meet the Spartans” failed by actually constructing a parody, which really shouldn’t be that difficult in the first place. The most incisive part of “Airplane!”’s satire was that it showed how ridiculous disaster movies were even when played straight. The more recent send-ups have eschewed plot entirely, in favor of hiring actors who look like other actors and calling it a day.
“Superhero Movie” though, goes right after “Spider-Man”’s famous plot. (In this case, our hero is bitten by a radioactive dragonfly.) Unfortunately, the movie can’t hold itself to this admirable concept; whenever the writers want to go outside of Spiderman for a joke they drag the movie to a halt and introduce subplots, particularly a blunt “X-Men” parody, that fall completely flat. But there are glimpses of the old rapid-fire “Airplane!” delivery when the movie is on track, particularly when Leslie Nielsen is on screen as the Dragonfly’s unexplainably ancient uncle.
The difference, ultimately, between “Airplane!” and its horrific successors is that the characters in “Airplane!” have no idea they’re in a comedy — they aren’t parodies of dramatic character archetypes, they’re the actual archetypes. In “Scary Movie” and its ilk, there’s a cheap self-awareness to the proceedings, as if the writers and, by extension, their characters can’t trust us to understand that ridiculous things are happening without spelling it out.
“Superhero Movie” falls somewhere along the middle of this continuum; there are some truly funny set-pieces, such as an origins scene in which the Dragonfly keeps running into things that seem to promise superpowers without getting any, and the super villain’s evil scheme is played totally straight. But in the end it can’t keep this elevated tone up — the desire, apparently inherent in this species, to include idiotic Pamela Anderson cameos and to make easy stand-up comic jokes about superhero outfits is simply too great.
Look: I can’t, in good conscience, recommend this movie. Like its brothers and sisters it is, in the final estimation, incredibly dumb. But at the same time it is the first film in this “series,” such as it is, since they stopped making “Naked Gun” sequels with any redeemable qualities whatsoever. With that in mind, “Superhero Movie” stands out in the same way that whichever of Marlon Brando’s kids who hasn’t been charged with manslaughter does. Go with God.