Deborah Lipp

Superman Returns (2006) 4/10
Superman (Brandon Routh) returns to Metropolis after a five year absence, to find that Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has a son and a fiance (James Marsden), and that Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) is out of jail. Directed by Bryan Singer.

Superman Returns is a ponderous, overlong, uneventful bore of a movie. It reminds me a great deal of Ang Lee‘s disasterous Hulk; the same deadly sense of self-importance, preventing it even from being “so bad it’s good,” the same obsession with fathers and sons, the same occasional reminders that a usually talented director is at the helm.

Perhaps the worst flaw of this film is it has no idea what it wants to be. Singer never decides if he is continuing the Christopher Reeve Superman films, or remaking them, or perhaps doing a homage. If it is a continuation, then the many repeated scenes from Superman: The Movie are inappropriate. If it is a remake, then why the painstaking effort to fill in the gaps between the two films? And if a homage, we got it at the first repeated line, 10 minutes in, and we didn’t need the bludgeoning.

Brandon Routh in the starring role is absolutely dreadful. I mean awful. I mean he makes Andie McDowell look like she can act. It’s scary how bad this guy is. He spends a lot of time doing Christopher Reeve imitations, and he’s passably good at imitating Reeve as Clark Kent (although he has none of Reeve’s gentle dignity as Superman), but he brings nothing of his own to the role. I watched the movie with my sister, and she pointed out that they needed to trust the character, not the actor who played him definitively. Routh’s imitation kills the series in the same way that a Sean Connery imitator would have killed James Bond. Christopher Reeve remains the biggest crush I have ever had in my life, from the first time I saw Superman in 1980 in a drive-in until today, I have never loved an actor half as much. But I don’t want to see Routh or anyone else playing Reeve’s Superman, if the movie is worth making, they have to make the character their own. So maybe this one wasn’t worth making.

Kate Bosworth must be thanking her lucky stars she’s acting opposite Routh, because only in such a pairing is she the talented one. She’s all wrong for Lois Lane, a character who is angular and sharp. Her character is actually well-written though, and has more to do than most iterations of Lois, but Bosworth isn’t persuasive.

From time to time, Superman Returns has flourishes that remind you Bryan Singer really can do good things behind the camera. There’s a lovely bit where he’s flying and rolls onto his back to use his heat vision while continuing to fly. It’s the sort of clever and inventive use of character and plot that I admire in a film. If all of the little good bits were strung together with, I dunno, a script, and a cast, well, they’d really have something.

Okay, there is a cast. At least a supporting cast. Spacey is absolutely fantastic. He brings real conviction to the part. And I’m a little freaked out by how sexy I find Frank Langella. But I do, and also he can act. Sam Huntington is charming as Jimmy Olsen.

But make no mistake: None of these charms make the movie worth seeing.