Cynical Cinema

Superhero Movie comes out tomorrow, July 8th, from Alliance Films. And it’s better than Epic Movie. For a moment there, I almost said that this was the equivalent of saying it’s better than nothing. But then I realized that I was wrong. Superhero Movie, despite being superior to Epic Movie, is not better than nothing. You are far better off watching nothing. In fact, you are better off seeing nothing, doing nothing, touching nothing and sitting in a sensory deprivation box for an hour and a half than you would be watching Superhero Movie. There are three main reasons it’s better than Epic Movie.

First, it has a story line. A loose, crappy one, but at least it’s there. Secondly, it’s reasonably understated without as many disgusting gross-out “jokes”. And third, I smirked once, when a guy spoofed that Tom Cruise Scientology video that has been circulating the web. That guy was really good. This was one more smirk than I had at Date Movie, which makes it a guffaw-fest compared to Epic Movie. The basic premise here is that superhero movies are going to be spoofed. So the people in charge of the film wrote a list of superhero movies. Spiderman was big at the time, let’s make that the main one. Let’s see…X-Men, Batman, The Fantastic Four, Iron Man…any more comic book movies we can think of? Nope? OK, let’s go.

So they take the nerdy photographer from Spiderman and turn him into the hero, with the hot girl he lusts after and the superpowers. Then they take the villain and put him in an Iron Man costume. And they throw in the guy who lights himself on fire from Fantastic Four, and add the parents-getting-killed bit from Batman. Then they add Professor Xavier from X-Men, and we’ve got ourselves a movie! Wait - you have the characters, now shouldn’t you write something for them to do? No? Just having them means the movie’s already done? OK…now, to be fair, there are twists. The Professor Xavier character is black, and cheats on his wife. The Fantastic Four guy sits on a Batman-esque gargoyle atop a Gotham-esque city. And the parent-killing is done to comedic effect. Sorry. “Comedic” effect. So…sound funny so far?

The cover of the DVD box features Leslie Nielsen, who at some point had some weight in movie spoofs, weight that disappeared when he starred in Spy Hard and Mr. Magoo in the mid-nineties. And even he’s only in this crap for about nine minutes. Pamela Anderson is prominently displayed on the box as well, because she is the second-biggest name in the film. She is on screen for maybe four seconds, total. No one else in the movie is useful or of note, so forget any further description of the cast.

The thing is, this would be a great premise for a film. With the abundance of comic book movies that have been brought to the big screen lately, there is ample material for a spoof. And at certain points, Superhero Movie seems to get that, if only for a moment. Like the big final scene where the real heroes crash into a nerdy superhero convention. There are some great comedic possibilities! But then…nothing. And that’s what this movie is. Just like Date Movie and Epic Movie and Meet The Spartans, this movie is a whole lot of nothing. Well, except that it’s worse than nothing. In that it will make you stupider simply by watching it.

Why do I bring up Epic Movie and Date Movie constantly? Well, because the people who distributed this DVD were smart about one thing. They did NOT mention those two piles of garbage on the DVD case. They mentioned Airplane!, which the producer, David Zucker, did indeed direct, and The Naked Gun, which he directed as well. They also mention Scary Movie, because their director wrote Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4, which were no classics by any means, but was miles above this turd. However, in the years since those films came out, the producers and directors have obviously found something to like in the Epic and Date Movie and Meet The Spartans mold, and they have employed it here. With disastrous results. Seeing Scary Movie and The Naked Gun on a DVD box might make you want to rent this. Which is where I come in. To warn you against it. This movie will make you thirty percent dumber overnight, leaving you so badly illiterate that you won’t be able to write me a comment to say “you told me so”.