Movie Review - Super

Super

2010

Starring: Rain Wilson, Ellen Page, Kevin Bacon, Liv Tyler, Nathan Fillion and Michael Rooker

Written and Directed by: James Gunn

Super, the latest film by director James Gunn, has some interesting ideas and goes to some dark places but on the whole misses the mark. 

It is the story of a short-order cook named Frank, played by Rain Wilson, whose wife (Liv Tyler) leaves him for a local drug dealer played by Kevin Bacon.  Distraught, Frank confronts his wife and Kevin Bacon and this leads to him getting his ass kicked by Kevin Bacon's thugs.  While recovering, Frank watches a Christian superhero show on television and decides that he must become a super hero to correct the injustices in the world and the Crimson Bolt is born.  He has no superpowers and instead decides that he must use a pipe wrench to beat people over the heads.  He spends his nights prowling the streets and begins kicking the asses of drug dealers, child molesters and muggers.  He decides that he must get his wife back and turns his focus on the Kevin Bacon character. 

Along the way he teams up with Ellen Page, who is wildly fun as his sidekick Bolty.  She is playing against her usual witty type and steals the movie as the not too smart, violence obsessed friend.  Whenever she is on screen the film is actually fun and where I laughed the most.  I wish I could have seen a movie about Bolty instead.  

Super is an odd little film.  I wanted to like it.  The performances, other than the excellent Ellen Page, are fine.  Kevin Bacon is good and there are some great scenes with Liv Tyler and Rain Wilson, but they seem like they all belong in different films.  The dependency of their relationship is compelling and we see hints of something deeper in the scene where Liv tells Rain about her life and they kiss.  This scene was made better because of the writing as well as the use of the great Cheap Trick.  

But then the film tonally changes.  It is this inconsistency in tone, not the over the top violence, that really sinks the film.  In fact, I think this is a good study of how important a consistant tone is to your story.  It is really all over the place, from the sweet and interesting scenes with Liv Tyler, to the dark realism of her getting injected with heroin and almost raped by a drug dealer, to the cartoonish violence that follows.  Gunn needs to pick one or the other because both don't work.  

I really enjoyed Slither so we know Gunn can do good work, but the film missed on not just the tone but the look.  I think he was going for a lo-fi look to the film that comments on the character and the situation, but it was not nice to look at.  There was nothing interesting in the images he put on the screen and at times they were almost gross.  And I'm not talking about all the blood.  That didn't really bother me.  It just wasn't nice to look at, which wouldn't have been a problem if he would have picked a tone and matched the look of the film to what he was going for.  The grittiness of the images just add to the confusion of what I was watching.  

Super had potential and if it wasn't for the amazing Ellen Page, my grade would have been lower.  I give it a C+. 

Les  

Here is the trailer: