"Super" is the latest superhero deconstruction film, following in the footsteps of "Watchmen" and "Kick-Ass." But it brings nothing new to the table, other than perhaps to show how demented anyone would have to be to put on a costume and try to imitate comic book characters.
The film is the story of Frank D'Arbo (Rainn Wilson), a sad-sack loser whose wife, Sarah (Liv Tyler), has left him for a small-time drug dealer names Jacques (Kevin Bacon). This drives Frank into a deep depression, and we see very quickly that he is a man who has no self-confidence whatsoever, and may even hate himself. Frank eventually decides that in order to get Sarah back, he has to learn to stand up to evil, and he decides to become a superhero named the Crimson Bolt. He has no superpowers obviously, and the best way he can think of to fight crime is to dress up in a costume and beat criminals with a pipe wrench. Along the way he meets a young comic book aficionado named Libby (Ellen Page), who, when she finds out who he is, decides to become his sidekick.
For anyone who has seen "Kick-Ass," this story might sound very similar, and it is. But where that film was a quite clever satire of the superhero / comic book / fanboy obsession, this film is simply a story of two mentally unstable people beating up criminals and becoming increasingly obsessive about it. "Kick-Ass" is also very self-reverential, essentially turning into one of the same stories it's making fun of by the end, but doing it in a very tongue-in-cheek fashion. This film, one the other hand, is just another superhero revenge story, albeit one that's extremely violent.
The one thing this film does bring though is the idea of how crazy someone would have to be to dress up as a superhero and fight crime. It's obvious that Frank has some self-esteem issues, but Libby is absolutely psychotic. She is introduced as a relatively normal girl who just happens to know a lot about comic books, but as she gets deeper and deeper into her alter ego, Boltie, we begin to realize that she is simply a crazed fanatic. Page has a lot of fun with the character as she becomes more and more unhinged, and it's probably good for her that in a movie like this there's really nothing that's too over the top, because she certainly goes all out in terms of Libby's crazed obsession. You can tell that Bacon is also having a lot of fun with his character as well. Wilson is fine as well, though he's playing yet another oddball loser in the vein of Dwight Schrute.
"Super" isn't a bad film, it just brings nothing new to its genre. If you're a fan of superhero deconstruction stories it might be worth giving it a look, but I think ultimately you'll find, as I did, that it's essentially a lower-budget, less fun version of "Kick-Ass," and without the likeable characters, or legitimate dramatic moments, that made that film so great. In all honestly, "Super" really just makes me want to watch "Kick-Ass" again to see a film that covered similar ground, but did it so much better.
"Super" is rated R for strong bloody violence, pervasive language, sexual content, and drug use.
Running time: 96 minutes.
Released domestically on April 1, 2011, by IFC Films.
2 stars out of 4.
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