Review of Superhero Movie (2008) by George R — 13 Jun 2009

I admit I'm a superhero movie aficionado. I even collect them so you would think I would appreciate this kind of spoof or hate it. Well, I found Superhero Movie kind of uninspired for such rich source material. It's like a bombardment of jokes, one after the other, but with about only 1 out of 4 finding their target (ratio might go up depending on your tastes). It has a fairly strong start but it's like you get exhausted by the barrage (no, not from laughing too much in my case). You get your fair lot of stupid and silly jokes of the Airplane/Naked Gun type which I don't mind as well as your farting, pissing and puking jokes which were somewhat funny (god, I regressed to 5-year old mental age!). The costumes and effects were surprisingly well done for such a low-budget film.

It basically follows a similar plot to Spider-man 1 adding jokes here and there and contrary to what the poster might have you believe, the other superheroes besides the Dragonfly (the Spider-Man imitation) are reduced to mere cameos which are for the most part lame and unfunny (Professor X does have a little more screen time). It's to the point where the poster is almost like false advertising. The little part spoofing Batman (killing of the parents) was amusing in a dark twisted way. Practically all the jokes referring to modern consumer/internet products (iPod, Google, Facebook, Craigslist, etc) were unfunny and felt more like product placements than anything. There have been many movies in the "...... movie" spoof genre with most of them being considered among the worst movies of all time, certainly the worst-rated ones. Superhero movie is probably near the top of that hall of shame as it's mostly poor with some funny moments, not truly downright terrible. In the right mood and with friends, it can be somewhat entertaining. Just rent it though.