Review of Superhero Movie (2008) by Halfwelshman — 30 Sep 2012

Superhero Movie is not a completely satisfying comedy film. It works to an extent as an accurate Spider-Man parody. It has serviceable comedy performances from Drake Bell, Christopher McDonald and Leslie Nielsen and has an amusing minor role for Jeffrey Tambor, and the whole cast make the very best they can of writer/director Craig Mazin's mostly uninspiring script.

The film is far weaker when the story veers off on tangents and tries to spoof films other than Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films in obvious and embarrassingly unfunny ways, particularly criminal is the offensively bad X-Men parody featuring Tracy Morgan.

Since it does make you laugh now and again (mostly from ZAZ-influenced jokes that likely resulted from David Zucker serving as one of the film's producers), Superhero Movie is definitely on the better side of bad films, and is far superior to the woeful Epic Movie and Disaster Movie.

It's just a shame that it's not more consistently funny, as there is little left to hide Craig Mazin's pretty sloppy filmmaking technique when you're not laughing. At the end of the day, being "the best of the Scary Movie spin-offs" isn't really much of an accolade.