ScreenWize

Is it a cliché? Is it a melodrama? No: it’s Superman Returns! But what else would you expect! Despite nearly twenty years rest, we all know that Superman has to save the world from the bad guys, and can’t really ever get Lois Lane, even though he loves her. What we don’t know is how the two hundred million dollars was spent making the new version of the story. That was left to Bryan Singer, the director who also brought the comic book based X-Men and X-Men 2 to the screen. And an impressive job he’s done with the dosh.

After five years away checking out whether there was any life left on his home planet, Superman (Brandon Routh) returns to Metropolis where the usual collection of DC Comic earthlings await. Only now, Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has moved in with fellow Daily Planet worker Richard (James Marsden) and given birth to a son. Evil maniac Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) has been released from jail early and is plotting various ways to get power and kill millions in the process. After Clarke Kent symbolically takes leave from his earth mother and Luthor from his dying billionaire wife, the two are ready for battle, with Lois and her son caught in the middle.

The film is at its best when it is deliberately over the top. Whenever Spacey, his mobster moll Kitty (Parker Posy) and their fabulous collection of beefy goons are in picture, we await the deliciously nasty lines with a wry smile. When the story lapses into the sentimental, neither Routh nor Bosworth quite have the charisma to carry the moment. Routh, who looks uncannily like Christopher Reeves, brings a more mournful, introspective flavour to the title role, whilst Kate Bosworth is rather contemporary and lightweight for a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.

Singer’s direction is careful and complex, demonstrating considerable sympathy to the history of the Superman story and clever referencing of other spiritual and mythological heroes, including Christ and Lucifer. There are cute little tributes to Star Wars, The Matrix and even 2001: A Space Odyssey, and there is also a bizarre beyond-the-grave appearance from Marlon Brando. If none of that impresses you then the music and special effects should compensate.

Superman Returns is a bit too super-long (more than two and a half hours), but is also a super-fun and super-forgettable blockbuster.

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Filed Under: Reviews by Simon