SUPERHERO MOVIE (2008)
Tagline: The greatest Superhero movie of all time! (not counting all the others)
(Comedy, Action, Sci-Fi) [PG-13]
In this one, a high school student Rick Riker (played by Drake Bell) is bitten by a radioactive dragonfly, develops powers that are more like spider-man than what a dragonfly would be doing. It doesn’t take long before he discovers the girl he is in love with is dating a guy whose father also has powers that came from the same lab. His powers depend on draining the life of one person every 24 hours. Don’t worry though, this is a comedy so it’s all going to be handled as comically as possible.
Out of all the “we are going to try to re-capture the comedy of “AIRPLANE” and “TOP SECRET” movies that are out there, it seems like 10 to 20 have come up short or just completely failed. SUPERHERO MOVIE must have slipped under my radar in the pile of other garbage comedies floating around in the last decade, but I did finally catch up with it and I was pleasantly surprised.
While SUPERHERO MOVIE mostly revolves around the storyline we got in SPIDER-MAN circa 2002, it’s also got some cool new ideas and is the closest comedy-wise to AIRPLANE that writer Craig Mazin has ever gotten. The problem isn’t competence either. This dude wrote for the TV show “Chernobyl” and THE HUNTSMAN: WINTER’S WAR. I will say the first half of this movie is better than the last half which gets a bit too raunchy for my taste, but the first half is solid and extremely fun.
This movie has everything from nods to SPIDER-MAN which I’ve mentioned to some hardcore shots at Microsoft, online medical questionnaires, to a scene that happens at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. We get some spoofs on Storm and Wolverine that are pretty funny. I wasn’t crazy about Tracey Morgan’s in this or how dismissed Kevin Hart’s role as “Trey” was but they seemed to know how to maximize Christopher McDonald’s acting abilities. He was honestly a better super-villain than some of the villains we’ve gotten in the MCU and DC movies.
There are lots of great cameos in this, but for me, none topped Marion Ross (best known as Marion Cunningham from HAPPY DAYS). She plays an aunt-May-like character named aunt Lucille and is pretty fantastic. Drake Bell is solid as per usual and Sara Paxton as Rick Riker’s love interest was good as well. It was also nice to see Leslie Nielsen hadn’t missed a beat at that time. This movie came out just 2 years before he passed away.
Overall SUPERHERO MOVIE gets a 4 out of 7 from me. It’s not mind-blowing but there is enough absolute ridiculousness to keep it fun. I should mention that this is not a good movie for kids, in spite of the fact that Nickelodeon spent a ton of time advertising it when it came out. There is also oddly a crazy amount of effort that went into this thing and I for one appreciate that we didn’t get a mailed in pile of crap here.
GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF DIMENSION FILMS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.
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