Super

Thank God for Ellen Page. If it weren't for her presence in SUPER (a film with virtually nothing "super" about it, aside from Page's uproarious supporting performance), the film would border on being terrible. But thanks to the fact that she was cast, this cinematic experience is slightly easier to endure, though I still struggle to recommend it.

If you're one of the people who saw last year's KICK-ASS and were put off by the film's "awkward" shifts in tone, you're in for some seriously worse disorientation with SUPER. You see, I absolutely adored KICK-ASS - yes, its tonality is a little wayward, but one thing we should understand is that it's FINE for a film to shift tones as long as it knows what the right MOMENTS are to do so. In my opinion, KICK-ASS knew exactly when and how to shift tones, whereas the poorly-edited SUPER suffers from an identity crisis that will prove annoying more than anything else for the viewer.

The plot is very simple: Frank (Rainn Wilson) lives with his girlfriend Sarah (Liv Tyler), a recovering alcoholic/drug addict. Unfortunately, it seems Sarah is induced to a relapse by Jacques (Kevin Bacon), a thug who, backed up by a couple of subordinates, kidnaps a drugged Sarah, leaving Frank alone and disheartened in his house. The film wants us to believe that these events lead Frank to suddenly become angry at how unfair the world is, and thus, decide to become a superhero. I'll admit there's very little in these opening scenes that make this sudden conviction believable, but alas, this is the synopsis, and I'm supposed to tell you what it's all about. Soon, Frank designs a costume and becomes The Crimson Bolt. He goes to a comic book store to gather information on other superheroes, and there he meets the effervescently geeky Libby (Ellen Page), who knows everything there is to know about superheroes. Once Libby finds out that Frank is out there fighting crime, her immediate wish is to become his "kid sidekick" in order to go on those adventures with him.

When films fail in their set-up, there's usually very little hope in what comes after it, unless something in the later scenes really wows you to no end. A film with a plot like SUPER's needs to do a good job of getting us to care about the lead, particularly in those initial scenes in which he goes out, dressed in a costume, and starts attempting to fight street thugs. But SUPER doesn't accomplish this, because it doesn't know how to display its protagonist: the film doesn't know whether he's got the strength to battle the baddies out there, seeing as all we get here are inconsistent scenes that never tell us much about The Crimson Bolt's abilities (or lack of them). The haphazard editing certainly doesn't help.

Suddenly, we get what seems like glorious reprieve from the mediocrity, once Libby takes on the identity of "Boltie" (a truly awesome name, by the way) and starts working as Frank's "kid sidekick". During most of the scenes that Libby/Boltie takes part in, pure hilarity dominates the screen. You see, this girl is so comically clueless that, whenever she attacks someone (innocent or not), she starts cracking up. And by that, I don't mean she chuckles at her victims; I mean that she goes "HA HA HA HA!!! That's internal bleeding for you!" Page is a total hoot in this film. The fact that the only good material that SUPER has to offer is related to her character is even reflected in Libby's ultimate fate in the film, which is very much unconventional and not something I was expecting.

Those good points aside, though, SUPER is an aimless film that has no interest in developing a discernible protagonist, which would've certainly made us much more interested in rooting for him in his mission to get his girlfriend back. There's a religious overtone that is meant to serve as Frank's motivation for doing what he does, but the religious aspect of the film is muddled at best. At certain moments, there was a part of me that thought it was an interesting contrast to have Frank's inclinations be based on following Jesus, yet for Frank's actions to be so intensely violent. Unfortunately, when we we come to the film's final 5 minutes or so (which are definitely the worst part of the movie), SUPER has the gall to wrap everything up into a nice little happy package in which, suddenly, our hero's ultra-violent acts all turn out to have been for an unexpectedly generous cause. This just smells of "Oh wait, wait, let's add this at the end, so we can at least give people some closure and a happy ending." I don't get too upset when, say, romantic comedies have an ending that makes all the problems go away and ties everything up real cutely (since it's the formula and all), but when a film that SUPPOSEDLY relishes dark humor and no-holds-barred violence suddenly tries to give an altruistic twist to its motivations, there's plenty of reason to feel cheated. In SUPER, the ending is too forced to make it seem like "at least all the bad stuff amounted to something good." This is yet another example of American filmmaking not having the balls to do something FULLY DARK when working with dark material.

Oh, I will say, though, that SUPER is probably the closest we'll ever get to seeing an American film depict a woman raping a man. I wish that that scene's daring nature on its own would be sufficient for me to give SUPER a higher rating, but there's no avoiding what a weak overall film this is. KICK-ASS was a fully-formed, completely enjoyable film that knew when to be funny and when to be dramatic, and more importantly, it knew when to parody the superhero genre and when to be its own movie. SUPER doesn't know when to do any of those things, and to make matters worse, it plagiarizes the line "How come no one's ever tried to be a superhero?" Sure, it's a generic enough line, and the two films do cover a similar plot, but there's such a thing as paraphrasing. Then again, SUPER is so confused on its own about what it wants to be, that its makers probably didn't even notice that they accidentally used the same line. It's too bad. On the flip side, though, if they ever make "Boltie: The Movie", I'll be the first in line.

5/10