Post by StevePulaski on May 5, 2011 18:22:48 GMT -5
Ellen Page and Rainn Wilson in Super.
Rating: ★★½
Super has a cute premise and two very charming leads, but it still doesn't make itself out to be as funny as it does. The movie thinks it is being clever and hilarious, when the humor and the "hit in the face" gags don't go very far. Wilson and Page have respectable chemistry and the overall plot is fair, but the film is almost too dark for a comedy.
Dark comedies are those strange little genre pieces that have elements of humor mixed with elements of death or something serious. One of my earliest reviews was a review of World's Greatest Dad, a film that was marketed as a dark comedy, when it is actually a very deep drama film only with tiny elements of humor through the sadness. That is what Super is. It really isn't a comedy, it's about a depressed fry cook who was recently dumped by his wife for a strip club owner and now "gets back at the world" by dressing up as a superhero who goes around hitting people upside the face with a wrench.
As you can expect, we are already working with a very strange premise. But that isn't our main concern. Parts of Super are strange and unnecessary. There is one scene where Page's character (at the time she is Wilson's sidekick) begs to have sex with him for no reason other than because they're a team. Obviously, he refuses, but the film thinks it needs one and has it. Complete waste of three minutes and utterly awkward.
Then there are some little perks that make up for some problems. The music was good, Kevin Bacon, Liv Tyler, and Ellen Page all do a fine job, it's just the overall idea of an unstable man going out and bashing peoples' face in with a wrench that leaves me uneasy. It's juvenile.
Think about it. This man, who is on the verge of a depression, is going around bashing people's heads in and almost killing them because they committed a simple piss-off in public. There's fine line between the crime of rape and the crime of "cutting in line." But, regardless, Frank just tells them both to "shut up."
This is a mixed bag indeed, its quirky, dark humor isn't as funny or creative as it markets it to be. And the fact that they are making humor out of a guy's wife who is now run by strip club owners who are getting her addicted to drugs is low grade and scummy. Super isn't quite.
Starring: Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler, and Kevin Bacon. Directed by: James Gunn.