Review of Supergirl (1984) by Aaron B — 02 Feb 2012

Oh, the folly of spin-offs. Get ready for a rant, dear reader, because not only is this a poor excuse for a movie- even a crappy mid-eighties fantasy flick, which Supergirl resembles much more than a superhero movie- but it is, at times, completely incomprehensible and utterly devoid of even the most rudimentary sense of logic.

The ironic thing about this whole mess is that the title character is actually quite charming and very well portrayed, but it's as if, having come up with a unique spin on Kara Zor-El that made her more than just a female Superman, the filmmakers had no idea what to actually DO with her.

.. so they crammed her into a weird cross between a tame teen movie and a sword-and-sorcery (minus the swords) flick. The plot, such as it is, starts in Argo City, a tiny chunk of Krypton that inexplicably survived the f*@%ing PLANET exploding and now resides in "inner space" for some reason; it seems the city crackpot inventor Zaltar decided to have his jollies one day by stealing one of the city's primary power sources, the Omegahedron, and using it to make shiny pieces of modern art (and yes, it gets weirder).

He then hands it off to a wide-eyed teenage girl, our heroine Kara, who promptly blows a hole in the city wall (nearly killing herself and everyone else in Argo City) and lets the Omegahedron slip through the gap and into outer space, where it inevitably lands on Earth.

Without it, Argo City only has days to live. Kara, in lieu of saying "I'm sorry," jumps ship, hopping into a floating metal bubble and blasting off to Earth, where she arrives, underwater and in full costume no less, as Supergirl! Now, instead of heading off immediately to track down the Omegahedron and save her home from a slow and painful death, Supergirl decides to adopt a human identity (using her unaccounted-for ability to shapeshift her clothes and turn into a brunette at will), infiltrating an all-girls boarding school as Linda Lee, Clark Kent's cousin (which, while Kara really is supposed to be Superman's cousin, it's never explained how she's supposed to know about him at all- let alone being aware of his secret identity); meanwhile, the Omegahedron is found by a megalomaniacal witch, and since it is now also a source of unfathomable black magic for some reason, she plots to use it to take over the world (after she forces some thick-skulled gardener to fall in love with her- a character and situation so contrived it's hardly worth mentioning, though it takes up a great deal of the movie).

SEE! Supergirl fighting a giant monster that isn't there! SEE! Zaltar getting drunk in the Phantom Zone before convincing Kara to climb a mountain that's next to a technicolor tornado through the magic of reverse psychology! SEE! Jimmy Olsen stand around and try to figure out why he's in this movie! Supergirl is just a hodge-podge of bizarreness, ranging from the unintentionally funny to (more often) the mind-numbingly stupid.

For all the failures going on in this movie, only a few things actually work, and foremost among them is Helen Slater as Supergirl. Capturing a sense of childlike innocence and wonderment at the world around her, Slater brings sincerity to a film sorely needing it- even when things get downright nuts, Slater delivers every line like she really believes it.

Her youthful energy really sells what's ultimately the best scene in the movie: Kara discovering her powers on Earth, gracefully floating through the air like a dancer before setting off across the country (by means of the greatly improved flying effects, the second thing in this movie that works well).

Unfortunately, the villainess of the story is just the opposite of Slater: an overdone, hammy performance of a poorly-conceived character. Faye Dunaway plays Selena, an amature witch who lives in in an abandoned amusement park with her wisecracking best friend (a set-up that reeks of sitcom, not cinema) and who nurses ambitions of ruling the world.

Dunaway, indisputably a good actress, apparently took a page from the '60s Batman's playbook, vamping it up for the camera and killing any respect that the Oscar may have garnered for her (kinda like Halle Berry in Catwoman).

Not helping matters is Peter O'Toole as Zaltar, Kara's obligatory mentor and the only sweater-wearing Kryptonian I have ever seen (I don't know why, but in Argo City all the Kryptonians dress like futuristic hippies).

O'Toole's greatest asset in this part is his aristocratic British accent, which lends some authority to the psuedo-psuedo scientific drivel he's forced to spout whenever he's on-screen; the funniest moment in the movie, for me, is when we meet the cynical, broken Zaltar of the Phantom Zone, whom I couldn't help but see as O'Toole's personal reaction to the very movie he was in.

The script (assuming there actually was one) is inconsistent and directionless, stringing together random set pieces with god-awful romantic comedy bits that play like a twisted episode of Three's Company.

The filmmakers never deign to establish any logical rules for the magic or science fiction stuff, making Supergirl's inevitable triumph over them seem as flatly contrived as the magic itself; the characters' marked stupidity grows increasingly glaring as the villains actually WATCH Linda Lee transform into Supergirl and somehow still fail to deduce her identity in scene after scene; and the final act of the film is about as devoid of reason as a pair of three-legged pants.

The special effects are pretty good for the time, save the occasional slip-up (let's play Spot the Wires! Or how 'bout Travelling Mattes?), but the fact that their use services a story that makes no bloody sense (Supergirl beats the Invisible Demon with a lightning-shooting lamp post?) takes away a lot of the luster, especially since most of the experimental stuff would only be excusable if you were really into the movie (lens distortion is not a storytelling device, dammit!).

Saying that Supergirl is the worst movie ever made would be a slight to a lot of crappy movies out there more deserving of the title, but you wouldn't be far off to put it in the top twenty. It's a brainless, formless, and, worst of all, boring attempt to cash in on two distinctly seperate genres, the superhero and the epic fantasy, the result of which does justice to neither.

The first total superhero flop- but sadly, not the last.