Jul 03, 2006 05:36 PM
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A high-flying Superman Returns director Bryan Singer doesn't so much have a story to tell as a Brand to revive, and he does it by twisting the plot. In the movie's boldest bit of twisting, Lois Lane is given a 5-year-old son.
The Daily Planet reporter's efforts have not gone unrewarded - Lane won a Pulitzer Prize for an article entitled Why the World Doesn't Need Superman.
Singer evidently wants us to think about our need for saviors. Lois' article was inspired by Superman's absence: During a five-year sabbatical, the Man of Steel traveled to the planet Krypton, a futile journey to find his roots.
Upon his return, Superman goes through a heap of emotional jet lag: He must adjust to Lois' new status as a mom with a live-in boyfriend and to his role as a perpetual outsider at the human party.
The cast has changed since Superman last flew across screens in 1987, the fourth edition of a series that started in 1978. Brandon Routh replaces the late Christopher Reeve, the best of all the many big-screen Supermen. Routh clearly studied Reeve's style, which either will strike you as smart or as a reminder of how much better Reeve was.
The rest of the cast proves a mixed blessing. Kate Bosworth takes over for Margot Kidder as the irrepressible Lane and Kevin Spacey picks up where Gene Hackman left off as the fiendish Lex Luthor.
Spacey's Luthor comes closest to capturing a comic-book spirit; but Luthor makes a lame-brained plot about attempts to create a new continent, a plan that will result in the death of millions of innocents. Parker Posey portrays Kitty, the hard-hearted moll who just might melt under Superman's gaze.
Because the movie takes place in the present, I wondered why the writers couldn't have come up with a few more interesting plots like: Superman blowing a tsunami back into the sea, for example.
In the early going, Singer brings the Man of Steel back to his boyhood home for a reunion with his widowed mother (Eva Marie Saint).
The story alternates between Superman's story and Luthor's fiendish return. And there are moments in this 2 1/2-hour saga when silence directly hint towards dullness. But surprisingly it changes Singer's at his best when he concocts a sequence in which Superman gently takes Lois into the stratosphere for a view of the suffering world.
This Superman becomes a near-helpless bystander in Lois' life. She's engaged to a colleague at the newspaper (James Marsden), who's spunkier than the Man of Steel. And she's obviously devoted to her asthmatic son, who spends so much time at The Daily Planet you wonder whether Lois has heard of day care.
Weakened by kryptonite, Superman is so mercilessly brutalized by Luthor that I half wondered whether Singer wasn't trying for "The Passion of the Superman" . And when a wounded Superman falls through space, his arms are outstretched in crucifixion mode.
This movie is more about watching a memory because it is so reminiscient of my childhood.
All I would say is this movie is like a one time watch for old times sake.
