"Superman Returns" Review

After having viewed a 10 P showing on Tuesday night before the wide release, I come away with mixed feelings.

“Superman Returns” is heads and shoulders better than the average Hollywood summer movie, but it suffers from a variety of problems, some of which aren’t even its fault (like the high expectations that’ve been placed on it). Singer’s over-reliance on the Christopher Reeve films is nice at first, but eventually it gets a bit grating. Snippets of dialogue and entire scenes seem lifted from Richard Donner’s “Superman: The Movie.” It’s been almost 30 years since that film was released. Why not start completely from scratch with a new incarnation of our hero?

As the title indicates, "Superman Returns" isn’t a true franchise reboot like "Batman Begins," but instead, a very late sequel that builds on the events of "Superman" (1978) and Richard Lester's "Superman II" (1980). (Thankfully, "Superman III" and "Superman IV" are ignored.) This visual and emotional continuity is what's right and wrong with "Returns" IMHO.

One of the things that made last summer’s “Batman Begins” so interesting was the way in which it answered origin questions big and small, but also used these details to drive the story forward in a fresh and organic way. “Superman Returns,” by contrast, has little of this type of innovation going for it.

Screenwriters Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris — working from a story devised with Singer, their boss on X-Men 2 — have at the center of their movie a suitably thorny interpersonal hurdle in the form of Lois’ romantic entanglement and son, but the eventuality of this strand is fairly obvious from its introduction, and not just because Richard, says to Clark upon first meeting him, “No matter how close I get to her, that woman is always a mystery to me.” Trading in the same sort of elegance and high-stakes emotionalism that made his work on the X-Men franchise so enthralling, everything here seems stretched like taffy. When a big interpersonal reveal comes, we’re still more than an hour away from the finish line; when disaster for Metropolis is averted, 50 minutes; when Superman plummets to the ground in a moment of sacrificial grace and glory, 20 minutes.

The film, too, is hamstrung by a few inconsistencies, whether it’s Clark seeing Lois off in a cab, immediately donning his Superman get-up and arriving at her home after her commute, or Lois taking Jason with her when she decides to snoop around Lex’s hideout, a massive boat. Brass tacks: the film feels less essential than either of the first two Spider-Man and X-Men films, and even Batman Begins. For all its flash, Superman Returns is way too long at 156 minutes— particularly its first hour, which could stand to be trimmed almost totally.

Instead of starting off “Superman Returns” with the Man of Steel (Brandon Routh) crashing back on his mother’s farm (“Hi, Mom. I’m home”), we have to wait awhile. Not exactly an iconic entrance.

Set after a five-year absence, during which he’s traveled to the destroyed remains of his home planet of Krypton, Superman returns to Earth. Returning to work in Metropolis as clumsy and bespectacled Clark Kent, where it seems only cub photographer Jimmy Olsen (Sam Huntington) has really noticed Clark’s absence. Superman is shocked to discover "fearless reporter Lois Lane is now a mommy," according to Jimmy. Not only does Lois have an asthmatic and "fragile" young son (Tristan Leabu) and a handsome fiance (James Marsden, who plays Cyclops in the "X-Men" movies), but she's also the recent winner of the Pulitzer Prize for her essay, "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman."

In other words, Lois is suffering a crisis of faith, although her desire to believe is signaled by the fact that her boyfriend is a pilot -- another guy who can fly. (And while Lois may have earned journalism's highest honor, the first time we see her on the job, she asks a colleague: "How many f's are there in 'catastrophe'?")

On Lois’ home front, Jason believes Richard is his father. Richard believes Jason is his son. Lois has not married Richard because she is still in love with Superman. Has she deceived the worshipful Richard? I felt sorry for Richard.

What parents do not know their son? Lois and Richard take Jason to work with them. They are a close family, but they have never noticed that Jason is “different.”

When Superman returns to action in a lengthy and exciting space shuttle rescue, Daily Planet editor Perry White (Frank Langella) seems more excited than Lois. "Three things sell newspapers: tragedy, sex and Superman," he barks, ordering his reporters to find out if the mystery hero still stands for "truth, justice -- all that stuff." Note that "the American way" -- a phrase added to the Cold War-era Superman TV show but absent from Superman's earlier radio and cartoon adventures -- is left out: As TV news reports show us, this Superman is a savior-citizen of the world, which apparently doesn't worry Luthor. "Bring it on!"

Like Donner, Singer is adept at action (the highlight is a robbery with a "Wow!" moment in which a bullet flattens against Superman's cornea) but he excels at quiet. "Superman Returns" allows Superman and Lois another romantic flight together; more effective and inspired is a scene in which the lonely superbeing uses his X-ray vision to spy on Lois' seemingly happy domestic life -- a sequence that vividly literalizes the hero's outside-looking-in status.
Unfortunately, Singer, like Donner, falters in his depiction of the villains. Gene Hackman's Luthor at least seemed somewhat lecherous, which justified the presence of Miss Teschmacher (Valerie Perrine) in two films; but Spacey's female foil, Kitty Kowalski (Parker Posey), seems to serve little purpose, sexual or otherwise. Here especially, Singer's fidelity to Donner rather than to DC Comics is a mistake in my view. The comic books have seventy years of great frights and menaces, but the Singer team didn't seem to look beyond 1979 and the cinematic precedent of a toupeed and real-estate-obsessed Luthor in its search for an evildoer. You'd think a budget of $200 million could have paid for a few back issues. Dark Seid is one baddie who’d give Superman all kinds of problems.

Bosworth as Lois Lane comes across to me as too far young and over her head, and has none of the edge or aplomb of Margot Kidder’s depiction of the character.

One key star does return from the Donner film, in recycled footage: the late Marlon Brando, who again appears as Superman's Kryptonian father, Jor-El, resurrected at the Fortress of Solitude in a crystal-powered projection. "Even though you've been raised as a human being, you're not one of them," Jor-El reminds his son. "They can be a great people ... they only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all ... I have sent them you ... my only son." In case the parallels are too obscure, Singer depicts the exhausted Superman falling from orbit with his arms outspread, like a man on a cross. The religious references become redundant and distracting, and we wonder if Singer is trying to justify his serious approach to the squarest and most wholesome of superheroes.

Superman may lack the edgy, misfit cool of the X-Men, the neurotic humor of Spider-Man and the spookiness of Batman, but his uncertainty regarding Lois Lane in the new film makes him easy to identify with, despite his near-invulnerability. His cloudy frame of mind is matched by the relative darkness of the movie's handsome cinematography and even by the tone of Superman's slightly redesigned uniform: The red of his cape is now wine-dark instead of cartoon-bright, and I'd like to see it flapping through the breeze again, in a more original context.

Brandon Routh is great as Superman, though, but perhaps even more so he is amazing as Clark Kent, providing healthy doses of geekiness undercut with sadness that works very well. His Superman is as close to the mark as you can get, rivaling only Reeve’s portrayal of the character. The film’s willingness to diverge from canon – in a big way – is, well, super, and in some ways I’m surprised the studio let Singer do what he does here. And the subtext of the film, the Supes-as-savior theme, approaches real art at times, with imagery that truly, finally reflects what Superman can and should be capable of.

In the end, Superman Returns’ success relates somewhat to one’s level of expectation. Measured against the relatively high bars of other recent superhero fare, it feels uncomfortably familiar. For those looking for a slice of high-flying entertainment, however, it sure pays off.