rating:
(out of
4 stars)United States; 2008
Directed by Craig Mazin; produced by Craig Mazin, Robert K. Weiss, David Zucker; written by Craig Mazin
Starring Drake Bell, Sara Paxton, Christopher McDonald, Leslie Nielsen, Pamela Anderson, Kevin Hart, Ryan Hansen
Better than 'Date Movie' and 'Epic Movie', but worse than 'Scary Movie', this spoof of films dealing with super heroes should be skipped by most audiences. Those who liked any of the three films mentioned above will find some pleasure watching this, but overall it is uninspiring and proves the genre is kind of finished, even though 'Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story' was a pretty funny attempt last year.
The story follows Rick Rider who becomes the Dragonfly after being bitten by a... dragonfly. Following the storyline of 'Spider-Man', Rick lives with aunt (Marion Ross) and uncle (Leslie Nielsen) and is in love with girl next door Jill (Sara Paxton). His enemy is Hourglass, also known as Lou Landers (Christopher McDonald), father of Jill's boyfriend Lance (Ryan Hansen).
Most of the time the film shows what unfunny looks like. It turns distasteful with a dirty talking Stehpen Hawking and tries to get laughs with fart jokes, even though many bad films have shown they are unable to work. Nielsen also shows he simply does not work anymore; watching him in 'Superhero Movie' made me long for 'Airplane!' and 'The Naked Gun'.
Actually, this whole film did exactly that. I had a laugh or two, maybe three, but that was about it. I mentioned 'Walk Hard'. This film is an example of how you should do a film like this. Apparently a seriousness, just to balance things out, is needed to make the close-to-childish jokes seem funny. There is no balance in 'Superhero Movie', and no humor too.