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Review #1 of 2
I'd intended to make one post with both of the quick reviews I'd planned... and then realized that if I talked about both "Superman Returns" AND the Doctor Who finale in the same post, I'd probably wind up spoiling people for the latter, even if I didn't mean to.
So, first up: Superman Returns!
Well. That was long. And mostly boring. Oh, it had its good points... I loved the nostalgia of the opening credits and the use of the old theme music throughout. The action sequences were kinda fun, when I could convince myself to suspend my disbelief enough to just enjoy them. This was much harder than it should have been -- case in point: in the scene with the plane and orbiter, Lois should have been dead, dead, dead. Or at the very least suffered massive and multiple broken bones and some pulverized internal organs (hey, I was in a car that rolled about four times while wearing a *seatbelt* and I broke bones and got bruised up something fierce), rather than something she could just walk away from. And let's not even get into the procedures used for the maiden voyage of a new orbiter. Ack!
Brandon Routh was very pretty and fit the role fairly well... he wasn't an incredible actor or anything, but he was passable and he got the job done.
Lois Lane was apparently 16 when she was a top reporter at the Daily Planet and had that romantic tryst with Superman. Also, Lois is supposed to be sharp-witted and assertive, and it just wasn't there. At all. Honestly, they should have gone with Parker Posey in that role... she's a bit older and more believable with the life history they gave the character and I know that she can, at least, pull off assertive characters.
Kevin Spacey was the highlight of the movie for me... he breathed new life into Lex Luthor, while still hearkening back to the old Gene Hackman LL of the previous Superman movies.
But oh, the pacing was abysmal!! Someone apparently forgot to hire an editor... you know, someone to cut down on the parts where the movie simply draaagggggggeeeeddddd. Ugh. There came a point, not all that far into it, where I realized that I'd have wandered away already if I'd been watching at home. Or, at the very least, I'd have grabbed a book or my laptop and gotten some reading in during the boring parts. Not a good sign.
So, I'm kinda glad we saw it in the theater (and even more so that we went to a matinee, so we didn't spend too much on it, and besides which, the lines for POTC were LONG), but I doubt we'll be picking this one up on DVD and I don't think it's one I'll go out of my way to see again.
So, first up: Superman Returns!
Well. That was long. And mostly boring. Oh, it had its good points... I loved the nostalgia of the opening credits and the use of the old theme music throughout. The action sequences were kinda fun, when I could convince myself to suspend my disbelief enough to just enjoy them. This was much harder than it should have been -- case in point: in the scene with the plane and orbiter, Lois should have been dead, dead, dead. Or at the very least suffered massive and multiple broken bones and some pulverized internal organs (hey, I was in a car that rolled about four times while wearing a *seatbelt* and I broke bones and got bruised up something fierce), rather than something she could just walk away from. And let's not even get into the procedures used for the maiden voyage of a new orbiter. Ack!
Brandon Routh was very pretty and fit the role fairly well... he wasn't an incredible actor or anything, but he was passable and he got the job done.
Lois Lane was apparently 16 when she was a top reporter at the Daily Planet and had that romantic tryst with Superman. Also, Lois is supposed to be sharp-witted and assertive, and it just wasn't there. At all. Honestly, they should have gone with Parker Posey in that role... she's a bit older and more believable with the life history they gave the character and I know that she can, at least, pull off assertive characters.
Kevin Spacey was the highlight of the movie for me... he breathed new life into Lex Luthor, while still hearkening back to the old Gene Hackman LL of the previous Superman movies.
But oh, the pacing was abysmal!! Someone apparently forgot to hire an editor... you know, someone to cut down on the parts where the movie simply draaagggggggeeeeddddd. Ugh. There came a point, not all that far into it, where I realized that I'd have wandered away already if I'd been watching at home. Or, at the very least, I'd have grabbed a book or my laptop and gotten some reading in during the boring parts. Not a good sign.
So, I'm kinda glad we saw it in the theater (and even more so that we went to a matinee, so we didn't spend too much on it, and besides which, the lines for POTC were LONG), but I doubt we'll be picking this one up on DVD and I don't think it's one I'll go out of my way to see again.
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It might be worth catching on a matinee, if you don't have anything better to do. I don't know that I could give it more of a recommendation than that (especially since I doubt I'll ever watch it again, myself, which probably says a lot). You might best off just waiting until you can catch it on television.
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Of course, some of the people on my flist who've praised it just like to see pretty men suffer. *g*
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Spacey made the most of Hackman's version of Luthor- menacing without being over the top or unrealistic. It's well worth the viewing in my opinion.
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I really liked the boy that played Lois's son and the man who played her boyfriend/SO. Having two handsome, competent, loving men share screen time was a treat.
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Though I haven't seen it, that was Brian Singer's perrenial second-fiddle nice guy, James Marsden, who also played Cyclops/Scott Summers in X-Men. (Where he is the nice but bland boyfriend of Jean Grey, who develops the hots for Logan/Wolverine. He has a very unfortunate and brief part in X3.)
So its not just me.
(Anonymous) 2006-07-09 06:51 pm (UTC)(link)Anyway - I didn't dislike the film, I just didn't like it very much. It was kinda boring. Maybe my expectations were too high going in, but still, it felt like a dissapointment. I agree with you on pretty much every point (though I didn't have a problem buying into the airplane thing... but I haven't had that experience)
Jay Barnson, AKA The Rampant Coyote, the Mystic Programmer
http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/